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8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
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ldquoHighly recommendedrdquo mdash S U S A N C A I N author of Quiet
E M B R A C I N G
A T T E N T I V E N E S S
in aW O R L D
of D I S T R A C T I O N
T H E
L I S T E N I N G
L I F E
A d a m S M c H u g h Author of Introverts in the Church
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
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8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
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T H E
L I S T E N I N G
L I F E
E M B R A C I N G A T T E N T I V E N E S S
in a W O R L D of D I S T R A C T I O N
A d a m S M c H u g h
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InterVarsity Press
PO Box 983089983092983088983088 Downers Grove IL 983094983088983093983089983093-983089983092983090983094
ivpresscom
emailivpresscom
copy983090983088983089983093 by Adam S McHugh
All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from
InterVarsity Press
InterVarsity Pressreg is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian FellowshipUSAreg a movement
of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities colleges and schools of nursing in theUnited States of America and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students
For information about local and regional activities visit intervarsityorg
Scripture quotations unless otherwise noted are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible
copyright 983089983097983096983097 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in
the USA Used by permission All rights reserved
While any stories in this book are true some names and identifying information may have been changed to
protect the privacy of individuals
Published in association with the literary agency of WordServe Literary Group Ltd wordserveliterarycom
Cover design David Fassett
Interior design Beth McGill
Images copy Creativeye983097983097iStockphoto
ISBN 983097983095983096-983088-983096983091983088983096-983092983092983089983090-983096 (print)
ISBN 983097983095983096-983088-983096983091983088983096-983095983097983094983097-983092 (digital)
Printed in the United States of America
As a member of the Green Press Initiative InterVarsity Press is committed to protecting the
environment and to the responsible use of natural resources o learn more visit greenpressinitiativeorg
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McHugh Adam S 983089983097983095983094-
Te listening life embracing attentiveness in a world of distraction Adam S McHugh
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references
ISBN 983097983095983096-983088-983096983091983088983096-983092983092983089983090-983096 (pbk alk paper)
983089 Listening--Religious aspects--Christianity 983090 Attention--Religious aspects--Christianity 983091 Distraction
(Psychology)--Religious aspects I itle
BV983092983094983092983095L983093983094M983091983092 983090983088983089983093 983090983092983096983092--dc983090983091
983090983088983089983093983088983091983091983097983090983089
P 983090983089 983090983088 983089983097 983089983096 983089983095 983089983094 983089983093 983089983092 983089983091 983089983090 983089983089 983089983088 983097 983096 983095 983094 983093 983092 983091 983090 983089
Y 983091983091 983091983090 983091983089 983091983088 983090983097 983090983096 983090983095 983090983094 983090983093 983090983092 983090983091 983090983090 983090983089 983090983088 983089983097 983089983096 983089983095 983089983094 983089983093
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Contents
Introduction 9
1 Te Listening Life 15
2 Te King Who Listens 33
3 Listening to God 53
4 Listening to Scripture 87
5 Listening to Creation 105
6 Listening to Others 133
7 Listening to People in Pain 159
8 Listening to Your Life 175
9 Te Society of Reverse Listening 203
Epilogue 213
Notes 215
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Introduction
L ISTENING COMES F IRST In this life you listen even before you are
aware of it From within the womb an unborn child is already
listening to the voices of her parents After her birth she will
spend the next months hearing the words they speak whisper and
sing to her until one day she will start echoing those words one
imperfect syllable at a time
o master a foreign language we must hear it spoken by others
before we can reproduce the sounds our ears have heard Virtuoso
musicians in their early years are immersed in music hearing the
chord progressions and melodies that will lodge in their souls and
one day sound from their instruments Much of our formative years
is spent in classrooms listening to teachers in homes listening to ourparents and in church listening to the stories the Bible tells us
When we meet the primeval universe in Genesis we learn that
it is unformed and chaotic but that somehow it has an ear because
its first action is to listen to the Voice that pierces the darkness
God commands light and the cosmos hears and obeys and through
its acts of listening order and harmony supplant the watery abyssSix days into the making of this listening world God creates the
first humans and their original act is to hear the blessing to
populate the earth with other image-bearers and God-listeners
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Listening is foundational to what it means to be human
Troughout the Bible listening is the central act of the peopleof God Tey are those who are gathered and formed by his voice
and held together by his word Tey hear his promises and judg-
ments instructions and warnings reassurances and exhortations
Te centerpiece of Israelrsquos prayer life the Shema begins with the
word hear ldquoHear O Israel Te L983151983154983140 our God the L983151983154983140 is onerdquo
(Deuteronomy 983094983092 983150983145983158) Te Hebrew word shema means ldquohearrdquo
Jewish children are instructed to rehearse these words as they rise
in the morning and as they fall asleep From dawn until dusk their
lives are made by listening
You become a disciple by hearing Listening is the first act of
discipleship as fishermen drop their nets and follow when Jesus
calls and listening is the core of their apprenticeship as they listen
their way from Galilee to Jerusalem Paul reminds us that hearingmust come before faith indeed that faith proceeds from hearing
How can someone believe he presses in someone they have never
heard of ldquoSo faith comes from what is heard and what is heard
comes through the word of Christrdquo (Romans 983089983088983089983095) Te apostle
James famously counsels his hearers to be quick to listen slow to
speak ( James 983089983089983097) Ancient wisdom cautions us that ldquoif one gives
answer before hearing it is folly and shamerdquo (Proverbs 983089983096983089983091) Tis
is the pattern that life commands Listen before you speak Learn
before you teach Hear the call before you lead Absorb the word
before you preach it
But somewhere along the way we start to violate the natural
order of things Speaking our minds and asserting ourselves take
priority over listening We interrupt someone else because we areconvinced we already know what he or she is going to say We
begin to take up more space than we allow for others We consider
ourselves experts on topics without anything more to learn We tell
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Introduction 983089983089
God what to give rather than asking what God wants to give We
participate by speaking and sharing and we assert our identities bytaking verbal stands We shout our messages from the rooftops
without knowing who is listening and what they need We view
others as projects rather than people with unique stories to be
heard We consider our great Christian task to be preaching rather
than assuming the listening posture of a servant We speak volumes
but we listen in snippets
When this reversal of the pattern persists we find ourselves
building lives that shelter us from having to truly listen We may
move into churches and neighborhoods full of people whose views
parallel our own avoiding the dissonance created by contrasting
voices by constructing theological and social echo chambers We
crystallize our beliefs and cease to ask questions Te great hope of
the Internet has been that dialogue will prevail that people withdifferent theologies worldviews and politics will log in to learn
grow and communicate with those who disagree with them Yet it
would seem that social media has helped people connect with like-
minded people and the unfortunate consequence has been the
intensifying and radicalizing of beliefs and the deeper entrenchment
of peoplersquos beliefs We settle into our own little truth corners
What the Bible portrays as a household of faith instead becomes
a scattering of encampments people who warm themselves by
their own fires whoop with their own war cries listen solely to
their appointed leaders and only interact with the other camps
when firing arrows
Psychology professor David Benner says that a major obstacle
to growth in our listening abilities is that most of us already thinkthat wersquore good listeners1 Tis book is predicated on the as-
sumption that most of us are not good listeners Terapists I know
say that many of their clients meet with them simply because they
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are not being listened to in their most important relationships
Without diminishing the value of professional therapy I wouldargue that the fact that we pay millions of dollars annually for
people to listen to us indicates our poverty in this arena Everyone
is talking but so few people are truly being heard
We need to learn how to listen because all the talking in the
world will not make our relationships what we want them to be
and it will not make us into the sort of people we want to be Our
longings for intimacy will not be satisfied through one-way con-
versations and interactions that feel like competitions Our desire
to be transformed will not be met through giving voice to all the
noise in our souls Our identities will not be discovered in finding
our own voice independent of others but in helping others find
their voices
We learn how to listen because we want to learn how to love We want to learn how to practice hospitality how to truly welcome
people into our lives We want to be story-hearers and not just
storytellers We want to find the internal quiet and stillness that
will open us to being changed We want to learn how to listen
because we want to become more human
I didnrsquot get serious about listening until I realized I wasnrsquot good
looking enough to get women to pay attention to me any other way
I am not proud to admit this In college I borrowed a copy of Men
Are from Mars Women Are from Venus from a friend2 Actually I
took it from her dorm room without telling her because I was
embarrassed to be reading it I still have it In that book I learned
that women are listeners and men are problem solvers I would later
dismiss that as a gender stereotype but at the time I used it to stoptrying to fix everything and just be with people I wooed women
with eye contact paraphrasing and active listening sounds
Listening at the start of a relationship is easy In the early
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Introduction 983089983091
months there is no way you can anticipate future conversations when
you sit gripping the arms of your chair teeth marks on your tonguesummoning all your will power to keep from interrupting someone
saying something you disagree with In those moments the God-
given ratio of two ears to one mouth seems highly unjust But that is
when the work of true listening really begins Itrsquos one thing to listen
at the beginning of our relationships but itrsquos another thing entirely
to continue to practice the discipline of listening before you speak
Te question that drives this book is how would our relation-
ships change and how would we change if we approached every
situation with the intention of listening first What if we ap-
proached our relationship with God as listeners What if we
viewed our relationship with nature as one of listening What if
we approached our relationships using our ears rather than our
mouths What if we sought to listen to our emotions before wepreached to them
Even though listening has been central to my ministries as
pastor chaplain and spiritual director the listening message is one
that I still need Tey say that pastors preach the sermon they most
need to hear and I am writing this book because I need to hear it
myself I need to remind myself that nothing has changed me like
listening It has not simply been the content that I have received
through listeningmdashthe words stories and whispers of othersmdashthat
has changed me it is the very act of listening Tere is something
about settling in and paying attention to someone or Someone
letting them have the floor and steer the conversation where they
want to go that is in itself transformative
Te very first word of the Rule of St Benedict that famous textthat has guided the life of monastic communities since the sixth
century is listen I want for us to put listening back where it be-
longs at the beginning in every aspect of life and faith Listening
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983089983092 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
isnrsquot only something we do in the preparatory stages of life as
though itrsquos a phase we grow out of once we reach a certain age Noris it just a pleasant medicine that we need to inject a little more of
into our relationships Listening ought to be at the heart of our
spirituality our relationships our mission as the body of Christ our
relationship to culture and the world We are invited to approach
everything with the goal of listening first We are called to par-
ticipate in the listening life
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ONE
Te Listening Life
YOUR L IST OF L IFE-CHANGING BOOKS probably doesnrsquot include an ety-
mological dictionary Tat takes a peculiar kind of nerdiness that
few want to claim Yet I confess that one of the most significant
lessons I learned was from an etymological dictionary that hefty
resource that breaks down the origins of words Irsquom pretty sure the
unabridged edition I dropped onto a library table splintered the
legs underneath it but soon it began to repair some cracks that
existed in my mind Before I opened it with the help of a burly
librarian I knew that listening has the power to heal divisions It
can bridge the divide between people in conflict transform stale-
mates into learning opportunities and unearth solutions from
seemingly intractable situations But I had no idea that listening canheal the rift between those proverbial enemies hearing and doing
Tose bitter rivals are pitted against each other in a few Scrip-
tures with doing billed as the heavy favorite Paul says itrsquos not those
who hear the law but those who do the law who are righteous
James warns those hearers who deceive themselves into thinking
they donrsquot need to be doers Jesus concludes his Sermon on theMount by comparing people who hear his words but donrsquot act on
them to a house built on sand
Here are clear warnings that hearing by itself cannot be trusted
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and that doing is the badge of the faithful It would seem that
hearing is but a narrow channel pouring into the deep sea of doing Yet the etymological dictionary taught me that the sharp distinction
between hearing and doing is the result of human beings tearing
asunder what belongs together For this is its lesson the words listen
and obey have the same root In Latin the word ldquoobeyrdquo would not
exist without the word ldquolistenrdquo Te word we translate into English
as ldquoobediencerdquo literally means a ldquolistening from belowrdquo Obedience
is a deep listening a listening of the whole person a hearing with
your ears and with your heart and with your arms and legs
Tis etymological thrill ride does not stop with Latin Te deep
connection between listening and obedience also appears in Greek
and Hebrew the primary languages of the Bible Te biblical words
for ldquolistenrdquo or ldquohearrdquo can just as easily be translated and frequently
are as ldquoobeyrdquo or ldquogive heed tordquo Plus the root for the words trans-lated in the Greek New estament as ldquoobeyrdquo and ldquoobediencerdquo ismdash
you guessed itmdashlisten Listening and obedience are inextricably
unabashedly linked so much so that we can say that those who
donrsquot act on what they hear have not actually listened As seminary
professor Howard Hendricks put it ldquoBiblically speaking to hear
and not to do is not to hear at allrdquo1
LISTENING AS OBEDIENCE
Te interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in
our lives all the time Sound has the ability to ldquocommandrdquo us to
summon a response in us forcing us to take notice Unlike visual
stimuli certain sounds have an invasive inescapable quality to them
and we donrsquot have ldquoearlidsrdquo to protect us from them2 Our sense ofhearing is the alarm system of our bodies As neuroscientist Seth
Horowitz writes our brains process threatening sounds in a tenth
of a second ldquoelevating your heart rate hunching your shoulders
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he Listening Life 983089983095
and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going
to pounce and eat yourdquo
3
Our bodies involuntarily respond to orobey particular sounds Someone screams in pain and our bodies
jerk instantly in their direction An ambulance siren behind us has
us moving to the side of the road almost instinctually Te sound
of a jackhammer disrupts our train of thought invading our world
without permission Sound calls us to attention4 When someone
says our name in a loud and crowded room even if they are not
talking to us we turn toward them And then there is music A
song sweeps us up with its melody so that we canrsquot not be moved
by it We all know the power music has to shape our moods and
stir our emotions even causing us to make decisions and take
action Music becomes an imperative that our bodies and emotions
respond to Dance is our obedience to music
In our everyday speech we regularly communicate that listeninginvolves more than the sense of hearing Te complaint I hear most
from parents is that their children donrsquot listen to them My friend
Mark has a spirited two-year-old named Will who as Mark re-
ports ldquois in the phase of asserting his independence from us by
doing the exact opposite of what we say Itrsquos harder to get him to
listen nowrdquo When parents say their children wonrsquot listen to them
they mean they wonrsquot obey them Or who of us hasnrsquot sat in the
driverrsquos seat taken a route different from that recommended by the
person next to us gotten lost and later heard ldquoYou should have
listened to merdquo Meaning ldquoYou should have done what I told you
to dordquo No one said listening was always fun
Psychologist and marriage researcher John Gottman says that
one of the leading gauges for measuring a happy marriage is whether spouses allow themselves to be influenced by the other
person5 Are they changed by their relationship or do they become
more entrenched in their old ways Being influenced by another
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person is a sure indication of true listening because it means that
your choices and actions are following your ears Apparently lis-tening is important in marriage Who knew
New estament scholar Scot McKnight reports that the word
listen appears in the Bible over fifteen hundred times and that the
most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people
donrsquot listen6 Isaiah 983092983096983096 is particularly scathing
You have never heard you have never knownfrom of old your ear has not been opened
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously
and that from birth you were called a rebel
When your ears are closed you do not yield to Godrsquos commands
and you are called a rebel
Listening is never passive a stall or placeholder until doing stepsin and saves the day Biblical listening is a whole-hearted full-
bodied listening that not only vibrates our eardrums but echoes in
our souls and resonates out into our limbs Johnrsquos famous picture
of Jesus as the Word of God means that Jesusrsquo entire incarnated
life not only his parables and sermons is the expression of Godrsquos
mind His life is Godrsquos speech to us We are correspondingly askedto listen with our lives and we are not truly listening unless we are
responding to Jesus with all our heart mind soul and strength Tis
kind of listening is done on the move
HEARING AND LISTENING
Up until now I have been using hearing and listening inter-
changeably and for the sake of ease I will go back and forth be-tween those two words throughout this book Te Bible does not
sharply distinguish between the two though I suspect that when
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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983090983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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983090983092 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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T H E
L I S T E N I N G
L I F E
E M B R A C I N G A T T E N T I V E N E S S
in a W O R L D of D I S T R A C T I O N
A d a m S M c H u g h
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InterVarsity Press
PO Box 983089983092983088983088 Downers Grove IL 983094983088983093983089983093-983089983092983090983094
ivpresscom
emailivpresscom
copy983090983088983089983093 by Adam S McHugh
All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from
InterVarsity Press
InterVarsity Pressreg is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian FellowshipUSAreg a movement
of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities colleges and schools of nursing in theUnited States of America and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students
For information about local and regional activities visit intervarsityorg
Scripture quotations unless otherwise noted are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible
copyright 983089983097983096983097 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in
the USA Used by permission All rights reserved
While any stories in this book are true some names and identifying information may have been changed to
protect the privacy of individuals
Published in association with the literary agency of WordServe Literary Group Ltd wordserveliterarycom
Cover design David Fassett
Interior design Beth McGill
Images copy Creativeye983097983097iStockphoto
ISBN 983097983095983096-983088-983096983091983088983096-983092983092983089983090-983096 (print)
ISBN 983097983095983096-983088-983096983091983088983096-983095983097983094983097-983092 (digital)
Printed in the United States of America
As a member of the Green Press Initiative InterVarsity Press is committed to protecting the
environment and to the responsible use of natural resources o learn more visit greenpressinitiativeorg
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McHugh Adam S 983089983097983095983094-
Te listening life embracing attentiveness in a world of distraction Adam S McHugh
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references
ISBN 983097983095983096-983088-983096983091983088983096-983092983092983089983090-983096 (pbk alk paper)
983089 Listening--Religious aspects--Christianity 983090 Attention--Religious aspects--Christianity 983091 Distraction
(Psychology)--Religious aspects I itle
BV983092983094983092983095L983093983094M983091983092 983090983088983089983093 983090983092983096983092--dc983090983091
983090983088983089983093983088983091983091983097983090983089
P 983090983089 983090983088 983089983097 983089983096 983089983095 983089983094 983089983093 983089983092 983089983091 983089983090 983089983089 983089983088 983097 983096 983095 983094 983093 983092 983091 983090 983089
Y 983091983091 983091983090 983091983089 983091983088 983090983097 983090983096 983090983095 983090983094 983090983093 983090983092 983090983091 983090983090 983090983089 983090983088 983089983097 983089983096 983089983095 983089983094 983089983093
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Contents
Introduction 9
1 Te Listening Life 15
2 Te King Who Listens 33
3 Listening to God 53
4 Listening to Scripture 87
5 Listening to Creation 105
6 Listening to Others 133
7 Listening to People in Pain 159
8 Listening to Your Life 175
9 Te Society of Reverse Listening 203
Epilogue 213
Notes 215
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Introduction
L ISTENING COMES F IRST In this life you listen even before you are
aware of it From within the womb an unborn child is already
listening to the voices of her parents After her birth she will
spend the next months hearing the words they speak whisper and
sing to her until one day she will start echoing those words one
imperfect syllable at a time
o master a foreign language we must hear it spoken by others
before we can reproduce the sounds our ears have heard Virtuoso
musicians in their early years are immersed in music hearing the
chord progressions and melodies that will lodge in their souls and
one day sound from their instruments Much of our formative years
is spent in classrooms listening to teachers in homes listening to ourparents and in church listening to the stories the Bible tells us
When we meet the primeval universe in Genesis we learn that
it is unformed and chaotic but that somehow it has an ear because
its first action is to listen to the Voice that pierces the darkness
God commands light and the cosmos hears and obeys and through
its acts of listening order and harmony supplant the watery abyssSix days into the making of this listening world God creates the
first humans and their original act is to hear the blessing to
populate the earth with other image-bearers and God-listeners
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Listening is foundational to what it means to be human
Troughout the Bible listening is the central act of the peopleof God Tey are those who are gathered and formed by his voice
and held together by his word Tey hear his promises and judg-
ments instructions and warnings reassurances and exhortations
Te centerpiece of Israelrsquos prayer life the Shema begins with the
word hear ldquoHear O Israel Te L983151983154983140 our God the L983151983154983140 is onerdquo
(Deuteronomy 983094983092 983150983145983158) Te Hebrew word shema means ldquohearrdquo
Jewish children are instructed to rehearse these words as they rise
in the morning and as they fall asleep From dawn until dusk their
lives are made by listening
You become a disciple by hearing Listening is the first act of
discipleship as fishermen drop their nets and follow when Jesus
calls and listening is the core of their apprenticeship as they listen
their way from Galilee to Jerusalem Paul reminds us that hearingmust come before faith indeed that faith proceeds from hearing
How can someone believe he presses in someone they have never
heard of ldquoSo faith comes from what is heard and what is heard
comes through the word of Christrdquo (Romans 983089983088983089983095) Te apostle
James famously counsels his hearers to be quick to listen slow to
speak ( James 983089983089983097) Ancient wisdom cautions us that ldquoif one gives
answer before hearing it is folly and shamerdquo (Proverbs 983089983096983089983091) Tis
is the pattern that life commands Listen before you speak Learn
before you teach Hear the call before you lead Absorb the word
before you preach it
But somewhere along the way we start to violate the natural
order of things Speaking our minds and asserting ourselves take
priority over listening We interrupt someone else because we areconvinced we already know what he or she is going to say We
begin to take up more space than we allow for others We consider
ourselves experts on topics without anything more to learn We tell
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Introduction 983089983089
God what to give rather than asking what God wants to give We
participate by speaking and sharing and we assert our identities bytaking verbal stands We shout our messages from the rooftops
without knowing who is listening and what they need We view
others as projects rather than people with unique stories to be
heard We consider our great Christian task to be preaching rather
than assuming the listening posture of a servant We speak volumes
but we listen in snippets
When this reversal of the pattern persists we find ourselves
building lives that shelter us from having to truly listen We may
move into churches and neighborhoods full of people whose views
parallel our own avoiding the dissonance created by contrasting
voices by constructing theological and social echo chambers We
crystallize our beliefs and cease to ask questions Te great hope of
the Internet has been that dialogue will prevail that people withdifferent theologies worldviews and politics will log in to learn
grow and communicate with those who disagree with them Yet it
would seem that social media has helped people connect with like-
minded people and the unfortunate consequence has been the
intensifying and radicalizing of beliefs and the deeper entrenchment
of peoplersquos beliefs We settle into our own little truth corners
What the Bible portrays as a household of faith instead becomes
a scattering of encampments people who warm themselves by
their own fires whoop with their own war cries listen solely to
their appointed leaders and only interact with the other camps
when firing arrows
Psychology professor David Benner says that a major obstacle
to growth in our listening abilities is that most of us already thinkthat wersquore good listeners1 Tis book is predicated on the as-
sumption that most of us are not good listeners Terapists I know
say that many of their clients meet with them simply because they
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are not being listened to in their most important relationships
Without diminishing the value of professional therapy I wouldargue that the fact that we pay millions of dollars annually for
people to listen to us indicates our poverty in this arena Everyone
is talking but so few people are truly being heard
We need to learn how to listen because all the talking in the
world will not make our relationships what we want them to be
and it will not make us into the sort of people we want to be Our
longings for intimacy will not be satisfied through one-way con-
versations and interactions that feel like competitions Our desire
to be transformed will not be met through giving voice to all the
noise in our souls Our identities will not be discovered in finding
our own voice independent of others but in helping others find
their voices
We learn how to listen because we want to learn how to love We want to learn how to practice hospitality how to truly welcome
people into our lives We want to be story-hearers and not just
storytellers We want to find the internal quiet and stillness that
will open us to being changed We want to learn how to listen
because we want to become more human
I didnrsquot get serious about listening until I realized I wasnrsquot good
looking enough to get women to pay attention to me any other way
I am not proud to admit this In college I borrowed a copy of Men
Are from Mars Women Are from Venus from a friend2 Actually I
took it from her dorm room without telling her because I was
embarrassed to be reading it I still have it In that book I learned
that women are listeners and men are problem solvers I would later
dismiss that as a gender stereotype but at the time I used it to stoptrying to fix everything and just be with people I wooed women
with eye contact paraphrasing and active listening sounds
Listening at the start of a relationship is easy In the early
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Introduction 983089983091
months there is no way you can anticipate future conversations when
you sit gripping the arms of your chair teeth marks on your tonguesummoning all your will power to keep from interrupting someone
saying something you disagree with In those moments the God-
given ratio of two ears to one mouth seems highly unjust But that is
when the work of true listening really begins Itrsquos one thing to listen
at the beginning of our relationships but itrsquos another thing entirely
to continue to practice the discipline of listening before you speak
Te question that drives this book is how would our relation-
ships change and how would we change if we approached every
situation with the intention of listening first What if we ap-
proached our relationship with God as listeners What if we
viewed our relationship with nature as one of listening What if
we approached our relationships using our ears rather than our
mouths What if we sought to listen to our emotions before wepreached to them
Even though listening has been central to my ministries as
pastor chaplain and spiritual director the listening message is one
that I still need Tey say that pastors preach the sermon they most
need to hear and I am writing this book because I need to hear it
myself I need to remind myself that nothing has changed me like
listening It has not simply been the content that I have received
through listeningmdashthe words stories and whispers of othersmdashthat
has changed me it is the very act of listening Tere is something
about settling in and paying attention to someone or Someone
letting them have the floor and steer the conversation where they
want to go that is in itself transformative
Te very first word of the Rule of St Benedict that famous textthat has guided the life of monastic communities since the sixth
century is listen I want for us to put listening back where it be-
longs at the beginning in every aspect of life and faith Listening
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isnrsquot only something we do in the preparatory stages of life as
though itrsquos a phase we grow out of once we reach a certain age Noris it just a pleasant medicine that we need to inject a little more of
into our relationships Listening ought to be at the heart of our
spirituality our relationships our mission as the body of Christ our
relationship to culture and the world We are invited to approach
everything with the goal of listening first We are called to par-
ticipate in the listening life
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ONE
Te Listening Life
YOUR L IST OF L IFE-CHANGING BOOKS probably doesnrsquot include an ety-
mological dictionary Tat takes a peculiar kind of nerdiness that
few want to claim Yet I confess that one of the most significant
lessons I learned was from an etymological dictionary that hefty
resource that breaks down the origins of words Irsquom pretty sure the
unabridged edition I dropped onto a library table splintered the
legs underneath it but soon it began to repair some cracks that
existed in my mind Before I opened it with the help of a burly
librarian I knew that listening has the power to heal divisions It
can bridge the divide between people in conflict transform stale-
mates into learning opportunities and unearth solutions from
seemingly intractable situations But I had no idea that listening canheal the rift between those proverbial enemies hearing and doing
Tose bitter rivals are pitted against each other in a few Scrip-
tures with doing billed as the heavy favorite Paul says itrsquos not those
who hear the law but those who do the law who are righteous
James warns those hearers who deceive themselves into thinking
they donrsquot need to be doers Jesus concludes his Sermon on theMount by comparing people who hear his words but donrsquot act on
them to a house built on sand
Here are clear warnings that hearing by itself cannot be trusted
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and that doing is the badge of the faithful It would seem that
hearing is but a narrow channel pouring into the deep sea of doing Yet the etymological dictionary taught me that the sharp distinction
between hearing and doing is the result of human beings tearing
asunder what belongs together For this is its lesson the words listen
and obey have the same root In Latin the word ldquoobeyrdquo would not
exist without the word ldquolistenrdquo Te word we translate into English
as ldquoobediencerdquo literally means a ldquolistening from belowrdquo Obedience
is a deep listening a listening of the whole person a hearing with
your ears and with your heart and with your arms and legs
Tis etymological thrill ride does not stop with Latin Te deep
connection between listening and obedience also appears in Greek
and Hebrew the primary languages of the Bible Te biblical words
for ldquolistenrdquo or ldquohearrdquo can just as easily be translated and frequently
are as ldquoobeyrdquo or ldquogive heed tordquo Plus the root for the words trans-lated in the Greek New estament as ldquoobeyrdquo and ldquoobediencerdquo ismdash
you guessed itmdashlisten Listening and obedience are inextricably
unabashedly linked so much so that we can say that those who
donrsquot act on what they hear have not actually listened As seminary
professor Howard Hendricks put it ldquoBiblically speaking to hear
and not to do is not to hear at allrdquo1
LISTENING AS OBEDIENCE
Te interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in
our lives all the time Sound has the ability to ldquocommandrdquo us to
summon a response in us forcing us to take notice Unlike visual
stimuli certain sounds have an invasive inescapable quality to them
and we donrsquot have ldquoearlidsrdquo to protect us from them2 Our sense ofhearing is the alarm system of our bodies As neuroscientist Seth
Horowitz writes our brains process threatening sounds in a tenth
of a second ldquoelevating your heart rate hunching your shoulders
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he Listening Life 983089983095
and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going
to pounce and eat yourdquo
3
Our bodies involuntarily respond to orobey particular sounds Someone screams in pain and our bodies
jerk instantly in their direction An ambulance siren behind us has
us moving to the side of the road almost instinctually Te sound
of a jackhammer disrupts our train of thought invading our world
without permission Sound calls us to attention4 When someone
says our name in a loud and crowded room even if they are not
talking to us we turn toward them And then there is music A
song sweeps us up with its melody so that we canrsquot not be moved
by it We all know the power music has to shape our moods and
stir our emotions even causing us to make decisions and take
action Music becomes an imperative that our bodies and emotions
respond to Dance is our obedience to music
In our everyday speech we regularly communicate that listeninginvolves more than the sense of hearing Te complaint I hear most
from parents is that their children donrsquot listen to them My friend
Mark has a spirited two-year-old named Will who as Mark re-
ports ldquois in the phase of asserting his independence from us by
doing the exact opposite of what we say Itrsquos harder to get him to
listen nowrdquo When parents say their children wonrsquot listen to them
they mean they wonrsquot obey them Or who of us hasnrsquot sat in the
driverrsquos seat taken a route different from that recommended by the
person next to us gotten lost and later heard ldquoYou should have
listened to merdquo Meaning ldquoYou should have done what I told you
to dordquo No one said listening was always fun
Psychologist and marriage researcher John Gottman says that
one of the leading gauges for measuring a happy marriage is whether spouses allow themselves to be influenced by the other
person5 Are they changed by their relationship or do they become
more entrenched in their old ways Being influenced by another
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person is a sure indication of true listening because it means that
your choices and actions are following your ears Apparently lis-tening is important in marriage Who knew
New estament scholar Scot McKnight reports that the word
listen appears in the Bible over fifteen hundred times and that the
most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people
donrsquot listen6 Isaiah 983092983096983096 is particularly scathing
You have never heard you have never knownfrom of old your ear has not been opened
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously
and that from birth you were called a rebel
When your ears are closed you do not yield to Godrsquos commands
and you are called a rebel
Listening is never passive a stall or placeholder until doing stepsin and saves the day Biblical listening is a whole-hearted full-
bodied listening that not only vibrates our eardrums but echoes in
our souls and resonates out into our limbs Johnrsquos famous picture
of Jesus as the Word of God means that Jesusrsquo entire incarnated
life not only his parables and sermons is the expression of Godrsquos
mind His life is Godrsquos speech to us We are correspondingly askedto listen with our lives and we are not truly listening unless we are
responding to Jesus with all our heart mind soul and strength Tis
kind of listening is done on the move
HEARING AND LISTENING
Up until now I have been using hearing and listening inter-
changeably and for the sake of ease I will go back and forth be-tween those two words throughout this book Te Bible does not
sharply distinguish between the two though I suspect that when
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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983090983096 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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T H E
L I S T E N I N G
L I F E
E M B R A C I N G A T T E N T I V E N E S S
in a W O R L D of D I S T R A C T I O N
A d a m S M c H u g h
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InterVarsity Press
PO Box 983089983092983088983088 Downers Grove IL 983094983088983093983089983093-983089983092983090983094
ivpresscom
emailivpresscom
copy983090983088983089983093 by Adam S McHugh
All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from
InterVarsity Press
InterVarsity Pressreg is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian FellowshipUSAreg a movement
of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities colleges and schools of nursing in theUnited States of America and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students
For information about local and regional activities visit intervarsityorg
Scripture quotations unless otherwise noted are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible
copyright 983089983097983096983097 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in
the USA Used by permission All rights reserved
While any stories in this book are true some names and identifying information may have been changed to
protect the privacy of individuals
Published in association with the literary agency of WordServe Literary Group Ltd wordserveliterarycom
Cover design David Fassett
Interior design Beth McGill
Images copy Creativeye983097983097iStockphoto
ISBN 983097983095983096-983088-983096983091983088983096-983092983092983089983090-983096 (print)
ISBN 983097983095983096-983088-983096983091983088983096-983095983097983094983097-983092 (digital)
Printed in the United States of America
As a member of the Green Press Initiative InterVarsity Press is committed to protecting the
environment and to the responsible use of natural resources o learn more visit greenpressinitiativeorg
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McHugh Adam S 983089983097983095983094-
Te listening life embracing attentiveness in a world of distraction Adam S McHugh
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references
ISBN 983097983095983096-983088-983096983091983088983096-983092983092983089983090-983096 (pbk alk paper)
983089 Listening--Religious aspects--Christianity 983090 Attention--Religious aspects--Christianity 983091 Distraction
(Psychology)--Religious aspects I itle
BV983092983094983092983095L983093983094M983091983092 983090983088983089983093 983090983092983096983092--dc983090983091
983090983088983089983093983088983091983091983097983090983089
P 983090983089 983090983088 983089983097 983089983096 983089983095 983089983094 983089983093 983089983092 983089983091 983089983090 983089983089 983089983088 983097 983096 983095 983094 983093 983092 983091 983090 983089
Y 983091983091 983091983090 983091983089 983091983088 983090983097 983090983096 983090983095 983090983094 983090983093 983090983092 983090983091 983090983090 983090983089 983090983088 983089983097 983089983096 983089983095 983089983094 983089983093
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Contents
Introduction 9
1 Te Listening Life 15
2 Te King Who Listens 33
3 Listening to God 53
4 Listening to Scripture 87
5 Listening to Creation 105
6 Listening to Others 133
7 Listening to People in Pain 159
8 Listening to Your Life 175
9 Te Society of Reverse Listening 203
Epilogue 213
Notes 215
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Introduction
L ISTENING COMES F IRST In this life you listen even before you are
aware of it From within the womb an unborn child is already
listening to the voices of her parents After her birth she will
spend the next months hearing the words they speak whisper and
sing to her until one day she will start echoing those words one
imperfect syllable at a time
o master a foreign language we must hear it spoken by others
before we can reproduce the sounds our ears have heard Virtuoso
musicians in their early years are immersed in music hearing the
chord progressions and melodies that will lodge in their souls and
one day sound from their instruments Much of our formative years
is spent in classrooms listening to teachers in homes listening to ourparents and in church listening to the stories the Bible tells us
When we meet the primeval universe in Genesis we learn that
it is unformed and chaotic but that somehow it has an ear because
its first action is to listen to the Voice that pierces the darkness
God commands light and the cosmos hears and obeys and through
its acts of listening order and harmony supplant the watery abyssSix days into the making of this listening world God creates the
first humans and their original act is to hear the blessing to
populate the earth with other image-bearers and God-listeners
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Listening is foundational to what it means to be human
Troughout the Bible listening is the central act of the peopleof God Tey are those who are gathered and formed by his voice
and held together by his word Tey hear his promises and judg-
ments instructions and warnings reassurances and exhortations
Te centerpiece of Israelrsquos prayer life the Shema begins with the
word hear ldquoHear O Israel Te L983151983154983140 our God the L983151983154983140 is onerdquo
(Deuteronomy 983094983092 983150983145983158) Te Hebrew word shema means ldquohearrdquo
Jewish children are instructed to rehearse these words as they rise
in the morning and as they fall asleep From dawn until dusk their
lives are made by listening
You become a disciple by hearing Listening is the first act of
discipleship as fishermen drop their nets and follow when Jesus
calls and listening is the core of their apprenticeship as they listen
their way from Galilee to Jerusalem Paul reminds us that hearingmust come before faith indeed that faith proceeds from hearing
How can someone believe he presses in someone they have never
heard of ldquoSo faith comes from what is heard and what is heard
comes through the word of Christrdquo (Romans 983089983088983089983095) Te apostle
James famously counsels his hearers to be quick to listen slow to
speak ( James 983089983089983097) Ancient wisdom cautions us that ldquoif one gives
answer before hearing it is folly and shamerdquo (Proverbs 983089983096983089983091) Tis
is the pattern that life commands Listen before you speak Learn
before you teach Hear the call before you lead Absorb the word
before you preach it
But somewhere along the way we start to violate the natural
order of things Speaking our minds and asserting ourselves take
priority over listening We interrupt someone else because we areconvinced we already know what he or she is going to say We
begin to take up more space than we allow for others We consider
ourselves experts on topics without anything more to learn We tell
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Introduction 983089983089
God what to give rather than asking what God wants to give We
participate by speaking and sharing and we assert our identities bytaking verbal stands We shout our messages from the rooftops
without knowing who is listening and what they need We view
others as projects rather than people with unique stories to be
heard We consider our great Christian task to be preaching rather
than assuming the listening posture of a servant We speak volumes
but we listen in snippets
When this reversal of the pattern persists we find ourselves
building lives that shelter us from having to truly listen We may
move into churches and neighborhoods full of people whose views
parallel our own avoiding the dissonance created by contrasting
voices by constructing theological and social echo chambers We
crystallize our beliefs and cease to ask questions Te great hope of
the Internet has been that dialogue will prevail that people withdifferent theologies worldviews and politics will log in to learn
grow and communicate with those who disagree with them Yet it
would seem that social media has helped people connect with like-
minded people and the unfortunate consequence has been the
intensifying and radicalizing of beliefs and the deeper entrenchment
of peoplersquos beliefs We settle into our own little truth corners
What the Bible portrays as a household of faith instead becomes
a scattering of encampments people who warm themselves by
their own fires whoop with their own war cries listen solely to
their appointed leaders and only interact with the other camps
when firing arrows
Psychology professor David Benner says that a major obstacle
to growth in our listening abilities is that most of us already thinkthat wersquore good listeners1 Tis book is predicated on the as-
sumption that most of us are not good listeners Terapists I know
say that many of their clients meet with them simply because they
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are not being listened to in their most important relationships
Without diminishing the value of professional therapy I wouldargue that the fact that we pay millions of dollars annually for
people to listen to us indicates our poverty in this arena Everyone
is talking but so few people are truly being heard
We need to learn how to listen because all the talking in the
world will not make our relationships what we want them to be
and it will not make us into the sort of people we want to be Our
longings for intimacy will not be satisfied through one-way con-
versations and interactions that feel like competitions Our desire
to be transformed will not be met through giving voice to all the
noise in our souls Our identities will not be discovered in finding
our own voice independent of others but in helping others find
their voices
We learn how to listen because we want to learn how to love We want to learn how to practice hospitality how to truly welcome
people into our lives We want to be story-hearers and not just
storytellers We want to find the internal quiet and stillness that
will open us to being changed We want to learn how to listen
because we want to become more human
I didnrsquot get serious about listening until I realized I wasnrsquot good
looking enough to get women to pay attention to me any other way
I am not proud to admit this In college I borrowed a copy of Men
Are from Mars Women Are from Venus from a friend2 Actually I
took it from her dorm room without telling her because I was
embarrassed to be reading it I still have it In that book I learned
that women are listeners and men are problem solvers I would later
dismiss that as a gender stereotype but at the time I used it to stoptrying to fix everything and just be with people I wooed women
with eye contact paraphrasing and active listening sounds
Listening at the start of a relationship is easy In the early
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Introduction 983089983091
months there is no way you can anticipate future conversations when
you sit gripping the arms of your chair teeth marks on your tonguesummoning all your will power to keep from interrupting someone
saying something you disagree with In those moments the God-
given ratio of two ears to one mouth seems highly unjust But that is
when the work of true listening really begins Itrsquos one thing to listen
at the beginning of our relationships but itrsquos another thing entirely
to continue to practice the discipline of listening before you speak
Te question that drives this book is how would our relation-
ships change and how would we change if we approached every
situation with the intention of listening first What if we ap-
proached our relationship with God as listeners What if we
viewed our relationship with nature as one of listening What if
we approached our relationships using our ears rather than our
mouths What if we sought to listen to our emotions before wepreached to them
Even though listening has been central to my ministries as
pastor chaplain and spiritual director the listening message is one
that I still need Tey say that pastors preach the sermon they most
need to hear and I am writing this book because I need to hear it
myself I need to remind myself that nothing has changed me like
listening It has not simply been the content that I have received
through listeningmdashthe words stories and whispers of othersmdashthat
has changed me it is the very act of listening Tere is something
about settling in and paying attention to someone or Someone
letting them have the floor and steer the conversation where they
want to go that is in itself transformative
Te very first word of the Rule of St Benedict that famous textthat has guided the life of monastic communities since the sixth
century is listen I want for us to put listening back where it be-
longs at the beginning in every aspect of life and faith Listening
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isnrsquot only something we do in the preparatory stages of life as
though itrsquos a phase we grow out of once we reach a certain age Noris it just a pleasant medicine that we need to inject a little more of
into our relationships Listening ought to be at the heart of our
spirituality our relationships our mission as the body of Christ our
relationship to culture and the world We are invited to approach
everything with the goal of listening first We are called to par-
ticipate in the listening life
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ONE
Te Listening Life
YOUR L IST OF L IFE-CHANGING BOOKS probably doesnrsquot include an ety-
mological dictionary Tat takes a peculiar kind of nerdiness that
few want to claim Yet I confess that one of the most significant
lessons I learned was from an etymological dictionary that hefty
resource that breaks down the origins of words Irsquom pretty sure the
unabridged edition I dropped onto a library table splintered the
legs underneath it but soon it began to repair some cracks that
existed in my mind Before I opened it with the help of a burly
librarian I knew that listening has the power to heal divisions It
can bridge the divide between people in conflict transform stale-
mates into learning opportunities and unearth solutions from
seemingly intractable situations But I had no idea that listening canheal the rift between those proverbial enemies hearing and doing
Tose bitter rivals are pitted against each other in a few Scrip-
tures with doing billed as the heavy favorite Paul says itrsquos not those
who hear the law but those who do the law who are righteous
James warns those hearers who deceive themselves into thinking
they donrsquot need to be doers Jesus concludes his Sermon on theMount by comparing people who hear his words but donrsquot act on
them to a house built on sand
Here are clear warnings that hearing by itself cannot be trusted
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and that doing is the badge of the faithful It would seem that
hearing is but a narrow channel pouring into the deep sea of doing Yet the etymological dictionary taught me that the sharp distinction
between hearing and doing is the result of human beings tearing
asunder what belongs together For this is its lesson the words listen
and obey have the same root In Latin the word ldquoobeyrdquo would not
exist without the word ldquolistenrdquo Te word we translate into English
as ldquoobediencerdquo literally means a ldquolistening from belowrdquo Obedience
is a deep listening a listening of the whole person a hearing with
your ears and with your heart and with your arms and legs
Tis etymological thrill ride does not stop with Latin Te deep
connection between listening and obedience also appears in Greek
and Hebrew the primary languages of the Bible Te biblical words
for ldquolistenrdquo or ldquohearrdquo can just as easily be translated and frequently
are as ldquoobeyrdquo or ldquogive heed tordquo Plus the root for the words trans-lated in the Greek New estament as ldquoobeyrdquo and ldquoobediencerdquo ismdash
you guessed itmdashlisten Listening and obedience are inextricably
unabashedly linked so much so that we can say that those who
donrsquot act on what they hear have not actually listened As seminary
professor Howard Hendricks put it ldquoBiblically speaking to hear
and not to do is not to hear at allrdquo1
LISTENING AS OBEDIENCE
Te interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in
our lives all the time Sound has the ability to ldquocommandrdquo us to
summon a response in us forcing us to take notice Unlike visual
stimuli certain sounds have an invasive inescapable quality to them
and we donrsquot have ldquoearlidsrdquo to protect us from them2 Our sense ofhearing is the alarm system of our bodies As neuroscientist Seth
Horowitz writes our brains process threatening sounds in a tenth
of a second ldquoelevating your heart rate hunching your shoulders
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he Listening Life 983089983095
and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going
to pounce and eat yourdquo
3
Our bodies involuntarily respond to orobey particular sounds Someone screams in pain and our bodies
jerk instantly in their direction An ambulance siren behind us has
us moving to the side of the road almost instinctually Te sound
of a jackhammer disrupts our train of thought invading our world
without permission Sound calls us to attention4 When someone
says our name in a loud and crowded room even if they are not
talking to us we turn toward them And then there is music A
song sweeps us up with its melody so that we canrsquot not be moved
by it We all know the power music has to shape our moods and
stir our emotions even causing us to make decisions and take
action Music becomes an imperative that our bodies and emotions
respond to Dance is our obedience to music
In our everyday speech we regularly communicate that listeninginvolves more than the sense of hearing Te complaint I hear most
from parents is that their children donrsquot listen to them My friend
Mark has a spirited two-year-old named Will who as Mark re-
ports ldquois in the phase of asserting his independence from us by
doing the exact opposite of what we say Itrsquos harder to get him to
listen nowrdquo When parents say their children wonrsquot listen to them
they mean they wonrsquot obey them Or who of us hasnrsquot sat in the
driverrsquos seat taken a route different from that recommended by the
person next to us gotten lost and later heard ldquoYou should have
listened to merdquo Meaning ldquoYou should have done what I told you
to dordquo No one said listening was always fun
Psychologist and marriage researcher John Gottman says that
one of the leading gauges for measuring a happy marriage is whether spouses allow themselves to be influenced by the other
person5 Are they changed by their relationship or do they become
more entrenched in their old ways Being influenced by another
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person is a sure indication of true listening because it means that
your choices and actions are following your ears Apparently lis-tening is important in marriage Who knew
New estament scholar Scot McKnight reports that the word
listen appears in the Bible over fifteen hundred times and that the
most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people
donrsquot listen6 Isaiah 983092983096983096 is particularly scathing
You have never heard you have never knownfrom of old your ear has not been opened
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously
and that from birth you were called a rebel
When your ears are closed you do not yield to Godrsquos commands
and you are called a rebel
Listening is never passive a stall or placeholder until doing stepsin and saves the day Biblical listening is a whole-hearted full-
bodied listening that not only vibrates our eardrums but echoes in
our souls and resonates out into our limbs Johnrsquos famous picture
of Jesus as the Word of God means that Jesusrsquo entire incarnated
life not only his parables and sermons is the expression of Godrsquos
mind His life is Godrsquos speech to us We are correspondingly askedto listen with our lives and we are not truly listening unless we are
responding to Jesus with all our heart mind soul and strength Tis
kind of listening is done on the move
HEARING AND LISTENING
Up until now I have been using hearing and listening inter-
changeably and for the sake of ease I will go back and forth be-tween those two words throughout this book Te Bible does not
sharply distinguish between the two though I suspect that when
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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983090983094 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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InterVarsity Press
PO Box 983089983092983088983088 Downers Grove IL 983094983088983093983089983093-983089983092983090983094
ivpresscom
emailivpresscom
copy983090983088983089983093 by Adam S McHugh
All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from
InterVarsity Press
InterVarsity Pressreg is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian FellowshipUSAreg a movement
of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities colleges and schools of nursing in theUnited States of America and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students
For information about local and regional activities visit intervarsityorg
Scripture quotations unless otherwise noted are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible
copyright 983089983097983096983097 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in
the USA Used by permission All rights reserved
While any stories in this book are true some names and identifying information may have been changed to
protect the privacy of individuals
Published in association with the literary agency of WordServe Literary Group Ltd wordserveliterarycom
Cover design David Fassett
Interior design Beth McGill
Images copy Creativeye983097983097iStockphoto
ISBN 983097983095983096-983088-983096983091983088983096-983092983092983089983090-983096 (print)
ISBN 983097983095983096-983088-983096983091983088983096-983095983097983094983097-983092 (digital)
Printed in the United States of America
As a member of the Green Press Initiative InterVarsity Press is committed to protecting the
environment and to the responsible use of natural resources o learn more visit greenpressinitiativeorg
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McHugh Adam S 983089983097983095983094-
Te listening life embracing attentiveness in a world of distraction Adam S McHugh
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references
ISBN 983097983095983096-983088-983096983091983088983096-983092983092983089983090-983096 (pbk alk paper)
983089 Listening--Religious aspects--Christianity 983090 Attention--Religious aspects--Christianity 983091 Distraction
(Psychology)--Religious aspects I itle
BV983092983094983092983095L983093983094M983091983092 983090983088983089983093 983090983092983096983092--dc983090983091
983090983088983089983093983088983091983091983097983090983089
P 983090983089 983090983088 983089983097 983089983096 983089983095 983089983094 983089983093 983089983092 983089983091 983089983090 983089983089 983089983088 983097 983096 983095 983094 983093 983092 983091 983090 983089
Y 983091983091 983091983090 983091983089 983091983088 983090983097 983090983096 983090983095 983090983094 983090983093 983090983092 983090983091 983090983090 983090983089 983090983088 983089983097 983089983096 983089983095 983089983094 983089983093
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Contents
Introduction 9
1 Te Listening Life 15
2 Te King Who Listens 33
3 Listening to God 53
4 Listening to Scripture 87
5 Listening to Creation 105
6 Listening to Others 133
7 Listening to People in Pain 159
8 Listening to Your Life 175
9 Te Society of Reverse Listening 203
Epilogue 213
Notes 215
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Introduction
L ISTENING COMES F IRST In this life you listen even before you are
aware of it From within the womb an unborn child is already
listening to the voices of her parents After her birth she will
spend the next months hearing the words they speak whisper and
sing to her until one day she will start echoing those words one
imperfect syllable at a time
o master a foreign language we must hear it spoken by others
before we can reproduce the sounds our ears have heard Virtuoso
musicians in their early years are immersed in music hearing the
chord progressions and melodies that will lodge in their souls and
one day sound from their instruments Much of our formative years
is spent in classrooms listening to teachers in homes listening to ourparents and in church listening to the stories the Bible tells us
When we meet the primeval universe in Genesis we learn that
it is unformed and chaotic but that somehow it has an ear because
its first action is to listen to the Voice that pierces the darkness
God commands light and the cosmos hears and obeys and through
its acts of listening order and harmony supplant the watery abyssSix days into the making of this listening world God creates the
first humans and their original act is to hear the blessing to
populate the earth with other image-bearers and God-listeners
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Listening is foundational to what it means to be human
Troughout the Bible listening is the central act of the peopleof God Tey are those who are gathered and formed by his voice
and held together by his word Tey hear his promises and judg-
ments instructions and warnings reassurances and exhortations
Te centerpiece of Israelrsquos prayer life the Shema begins with the
word hear ldquoHear O Israel Te L983151983154983140 our God the L983151983154983140 is onerdquo
(Deuteronomy 983094983092 983150983145983158) Te Hebrew word shema means ldquohearrdquo
Jewish children are instructed to rehearse these words as they rise
in the morning and as they fall asleep From dawn until dusk their
lives are made by listening
You become a disciple by hearing Listening is the first act of
discipleship as fishermen drop their nets and follow when Jesus
calls and listening is the core of their apprenticeship as they listen
their way from Galilee to Jerusalem Paul reminds us that hearingmust come before faith indeed that faith proceeds from hearing
How can someone believe he presses in someone they have never
heard of ldquoSo faith comes from what is heard and what is heard
comes through the word of Christrdquo (Romans 983089983088983089983095) Te apostle
James famously counsels his hearers to be quick to listen slow to
speak ( James 983089983089983097) Ancient wisdom cautions us that ldquoif one gives
answer before hearing it is folly and shamerdquo (Proverbs 983089983096983089983091) Tis
is the pattern that life commands Listen before you speak Learn
before you teach Hear the call before you lead Absorb the word
before you preach it
But somewhere along the way we start to violate the natural
order of things Speaking our minds and asserting ourselves take
priority over listening We interrupt someone else because we areconvinced we already know what he or she is going to say We
begin to take up more space than we allow for others We consider
ourselves experts on topics without anything more to learn We tell
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Introduction 983089983089
God what to give rather than asking what God wants to give We
participate by speaking and sharing and we assert our identities bytaking verbal stands We shout our messages from the rooftops
without knowing who is listening and what they need We view
others as projects rather than people with unique stories to be
heard We consider our great Christian task to be preaching rather
than assuming the listening posture of a servant We speak volumes
but we listen in snippets
When this reversal of the pattern persists we find ourselves
building lives that shelter us from having to truly listen We may
move into churches and neighborhoods full of people whose views
parallel our own avoiding the dissonance created by contrasting
voices by constructing theological and social echo chambers We
crystallize our beliefs and cease to ask questions Te great hope of
the Internet has been that dialogue will prevail that people withdifferent theologies worldviews and politics will log in to learn
grow and communicate with those who disagree with them Yet it
would seem that social media has helped people connect with like-
minded people and the unfortunate consequence has been the
intensifying and radicalizing of beliefs and the deeper entrenchment
of peoplersquos beliefs We settle into our own little truth corners
What the Bible portrays as a household of faith instead becomes
a scattering of encampments people who warm themselves by
their own fires whoop with their own war cries listen solely to
their appointed leaders and only interact with the other camps
when firing arrows
Psychology professor David Benner says that a major obstacle
to growth in our listening abilities is that most of us already thinkthat wersquore good listeners1 Tis book is predicated on the as-
sumption that most of us are not good listeners Terapists I know
say that many of their clients meet with them simply because they
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are not being listened to in their most important relationships
Without diminishing the value of professional therapy I wouldargue that the fact that we pay millions of dollars annually for
people to listen to us indicates our poverty in this arena Everyone
is talking but so few people are truly being heard
We need to learn how to listen because all the talking in the
world will not make our relationships what we want them to be
and it will not make us into the sort of people we want to be Our
longings for intimacy will not be satisfied through one-way con-
versations and interactions that feel like competitions Our desire
to be transformed will not be met through giving voice to all the
noise in our souls Our identities will not be discovered in finding
our own voice independent of others but in helping others find
their voices
We learn how to listen because we want to learn how to love We want to learn how to practice hospitality how to truly welcome
people into our lives We want to be story-hearers and not just
storytellers We want to find the internal quiet and stillness that
will open us to being changed We want to learn how to listen
because we want to become more human
I didnrsquot get serious about listening until I realized I wasnrsquot good
looking enough to get women to pay attention to me any other way
I am not proud to admit this In college I borrowed a copy of Men
Are from Mars Women Are from Venus from a friend2 Actually I
took it from her dorm room without telling her because I was
embarrassed to be reading it I still have it In that book I learned
that women are listeners and men are problem solvers I would later
dismiss that as a gender stereotype but at the time I used it to stoptrying to fix everything and just be with people I wooed women
with eye contact paraphrasing and active listening sounds
Listening at the start of a relationship is easy In the early
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Introduction 983089983091
months there is no way you can anticipate future conversations when
you sit gripping the arms of your chair teeth marks on your tonguesummoning all your will power to keep from interrupting someone
saying something you disagree with In those moments the God-
given ratio of two ears to one mouth seems highly unjust But that is
when the work of true listening really begins Itrsquos one thing to listen
at the beginning of our relationships but itrsquos another thing entirely
to continue to practice the discipline of listening before you speak
Te question that drives this book is how would our relation-
ships change and how would we change if we approached every
situation with the intention of listening first What if we ap-
proached our relationship with God as listeners What if we
viewed our relationship with nature as one of listening What if
we approached our relationships using our ears rather than our
mouths What if we sought to listen to our emotions before wepreached to them
Even though listening has been central to my ministries as
pastor chaplain and spiritual director the listening message is one
that I still need Tey say that pastors preach the sermon they most
need to hear and I am writing this book because I need to hear it
myself I need to remind myself that nothing has changed me like
listening It has not simply been the content that I have received
through listeningmdashthe words stories and whispers of othersmdashthat
has changed me it is the very act of listening Tere is something
about settling in and paying attention to someone or Someone
letting them have the floor and steer the conversation where they
want to go that is in itself transformative
Te very first word of the Rule of St Benedict that famous textthat has guided the life of monastic communities since the sixth
century is listen I want for us to put listening back where it be-
longs at the beginning in every aspect of life and faith Listening
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isnrsquot only something we do in the preparatory stages of life as
though itrsquos a phase we grow out of once we reach a certain age Noris it just a pleasant medicine that we need to inject a little more of
into our relationships Listening ought to be at the heart of our
spirituality our relationships our mission as the body of Christ our
relationship to culture and the world We are invited to approach
everything with the goal of listening first We are called to par-
ticipate in the listening life
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ONE
Te Listening Life
YOUR L IST OF L IFE-CHANGING BOOKS probably doesnrsquot include an ety-
mological dictionary Tat takes a peculiar kind of nerdiness that
few want to claim Yet I confess that one of the most significant
lessons I learned was from an etymological dictionary that hefty
resource that breaks down the origins of words Irsquom pretty sure the
unabridged edition I dropped onto a library table splintered the
legs underneath it but soon it began to repair some cracks that
existed in my mind Before I opened it with the help of a burly
librarian I knew that listening has the power to heal divisions It
can bridge the divide between people in conflict transform stale-
mates into learning opportunities and unearth solutions from
seemingly intractable situations But I had no idea that listening canheal the rift between those proverbial enemies hearing and doing
Tose bitter rivals are pitted against each other in a few Scrip-
tures with doing billed as the heavy favorite Paul says itrsquos not those
who hear the law but those who do the law who are righteous
James warns those hearers who deceive themselves into thinking
they donrsquot need to be doers Jesus concludes his Sermon on theMount by comparing people who hear his words but donrsquot act on
them to a house built on sand
Here are clear warnings that hearing by itself cannot be trusted
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and that doing is the badge of the faithful It would seem that
hearing is but a narrow channel pouring into the deep sea of doing Yet the etymological dictionary taught me that the sharp distinction
between hearing and doing is the result of human beings tearing
asunder what belongs together For this is its lesson the words listen
and obey have the same root In Latin the word ldquoobeyrdquo would not
exist without the word ldquolistenrdquo Te word we translate into English
as ldquoobediencerdquo literally means a ldquolistening from belowrdquo Obedience
is a deep listening a listening of the whole person a hearing with
your ears and with your heart and with your arms and legs
Tis etymological thrill ride does not stop with Latin Te deep
connection between listening and obedience also appears in Greek
and Hebrew the primary languages of the Bible Te biblical words
for ldquolistenrdquo or ldquohearrdquo can just as easily be translated and frequently
are as ldquoobeyrdquo or ldquogive heed tordquo Plus the root for the words trans-lated in the Greek New estament as ldquoobeyrdquo and ldquoobediencerdquo ismdash
you guessed itmdashlisten Listening and obedience are inextricably
unabashedly linked so much so that we can say that those who
donrsquot act on what they hear have not actually listened As seminary
professor Howard Hendricks put it ldquoBiblically speaking to hear
and not to do is not to hear at allrdquo1
LISTENING AS OBEDIENCE
Te interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in
our lives all the time Sound has the ability to ldquocommandrdquo us to
summon a response in us forcing us to take notice Unlike visual
stimuli certain sounds have an invasive inescapable quality to them
and we donrsquot have ldquoearlidsrdquo to protect us from them2 Our sense ofhearing is the alarm system of our bodies As neuroscientist Seth
Horowitz writes our brains process threatening sounds in a tenth
of a second ldquoelevating your heart rate hunching your shoulders
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he Listening Life 983089983095
and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going
to pounce and eat yourdquo
3
Our bodies involuntarily respond to orobey particular sounds Someone screams in pain and our bodies
jerk instantly in their direction An ambulance siren behind us has
us moving to the side of the road almost instinctually Te sound
of a jackhammer disrupts our train of thought invading our world
without permission Sound calls us to attention4 When someone
says our name in a loud and crowded room even if they are not
talking to us we turn toward them And then there is music A
song sweeps us up with its melody so that we canrsquot not be moved
by it We all know the power music has to shape our moods and
stir our emotions even causing us to make decisions and take
action Music becomes an imperative that our bodies and emotions
respond to Dance is our obedience to music
In our everyday speech we regularly communicate that listeninginvolves more than the sense of hearing Te complaint I hear most
from parents is that their children donrsquot listen to them My friend
Mark has a spirited two-year-old named Will who as Mark re-
ports ldquois in the phase of asserting his independence from us by
doing the exact opposite of what we say Itrsquos harder to get him to
listen nowrdquo When parents say their children wonrsquot listen to them
they mean they wonrsquot obey them Or who of us hasnrsquot sat in the
driverrsquos seat taken a route different from that recommended by the
person next to us gotten lost and later heard ldquoYou should have
listened to merdquo Meaning ldquoYou should have done what I told you
to dordquo No one said listening was always fun
Psychologist and marriage researcher John Gottman says that
one of the leading gauges for measuring a happy marriage is whether spouses allow themselves to be influenced by the other
person5 Are they changed by their relationship or do they become
more entrenched in their old ways Being influenced by another
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person is a sure indication of true listening because it means that
your choices and actions are following your ears Apparently lis-tening is important in marriage Who knew
New estament scholar Scot McKnight reports that the word
listen appears in the Bible over fifteen hundred times and that the
most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people
donrsquot listen6 Isaiah 983092983096983096 is particularly scathing
You have never heard you have never knownfrom of old your ear has not been opened
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously
and that from birth you were called a rebel
When your ears are closed you do not yield to Godrsquos commands
and you are called a rebel
Listening is never passive a stall or placeholder until doing stepsin and saves the day Biblical listening is a whole-hearted full-
bodied listening that not only vibrates our eardrums but echoes in
our souls and resonates out into our limbs Johnrsquos famous picture
of Jesus as the Word of God means that Jesusrsquo entire incarnated
life not only his parables and sermons is the expression of Godrsquos
mind His life is Godrsquos speech to us We are correspondingly askedto listen with our lives and we are not truly listening unless we are
responding to Jesus with all our heart mind soul and strength Tis
kind of listening is done on the move
HEARING AND LISTENING
Up until now I have been using hearing and listening inter-
changeably and for the sake of ease I will go back and forth be-tween those two words throughout this book Te Bible does not
sharply distinguish between the two though I suspect that when
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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Contents
Introduction 9
1 Te Listening Life 15
2 Te King Who Listens 33
3 Listening to God 53
4 Listening to Scripture 87
5 Listening to Creation 105
6 Listening to Others 133
7 Listening to People in Pain 159
8 Listening to Your Life 175
9 Te Society of Reverse Listening 203
Epilogue 213
Notes 215
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Introduction
L ISTENING COMES F IRST In this life you listen even before you are
aware of it From within the womb an unborn child is already
listening to the voices of her parents After her birth she will
spend the next months hearing the words they speak whisper and
sing to her until one day she will start echoing those words one
imperfect syllable at a time
o master a foreign language we must hear it spoken by others
before we can reproduce the sounds our ears have heard Virtuoso
musicians in their early years are immersed in music hearing the
chord progressions and melodies that will lodge in their souls and
one day sound from their instruments Much of our formative years
is spent in classrooms listening to teachers in homes listening to ourparents and in church listening to the stories the Bible tells us
When we meet the primeval universe in Genesis we learn that
it is unformed and chaotic but that somehow it has an ear because
its first action is to listen to the Voice that pierces the darkness
God commands light and the cosmos hears and obeys and through
its acts of listening order and harmony supplant the watery abyssSix days into the making of this listening world God creates the
first humans and their original act is to hear the blessing to
populate the earth with other image-bearers and God-listeners
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Listening is foundational to what it means to be human
Troughout the Bible listening is the central act of the peopleof God Tey are those who are gathered and formed by his voice
and held together by his word Tey hear his promises and judg-
ments instructions and warnings reassurances and exhortations
Te centerpiece of Israelrsquos prayer life the Shema begins with the
word hear ldquoHear O Israel Te L983151983154983140 our God the L983151983154983140 is onerdquo
(Deuteronomy 983094983092 983150983145983158) Te Hebrew word shema means ldquohearrdquo
Jewish children are instructed to rehearse these words as they rise
in the morning and as they fall asleep From dawn until dusk their
lives are made by listening
You become a disciple by hearing Listening is the first act of
discipleship as fishermen drop their nets and follow when Jesus
calls and listening is the core of their apprenticeship as they listen
their way from Galilee to Jerusalem Paul reminds us that hearingmust come before faith indeed that faith proceeds from hearing
How can someone believe he presses in someone they have never
heard of ldquoSo faith comes from what is heard and what is heard
comes through the word of Christrdquo (Romans 983089983088983089983095) Te apostle
James famously counsels his hearers to be quick to listen slow to
speak ( James 983089983089983097) Ancient wisdom cautions us that ldquoif one gives
answer before hearing it is folly and shamerdquo (Proverbs 983089983096983089983091) Tis
is the pattern that life commands Listen before you speak Learn
before you teach Hear the call before you lead Absorb the word
before you preach it
But somewhere along the way we start to violate the natural
order of things Speaking our minds and asserting ourselves take
priority over listening We interrupt someone else because we areconvinced we already know what he or she is going to say We
begin to take up more space than we allow for others We consider
ourselves experts on topics without anything more to learn We tell
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Introduction 983089983089
God what to give rather than asking what God wants to give We
participate by speaking and sharing and we assert our identities bytaking verbal stands We shout our messages from the rooftops
without knowing who is listening and what they need We view
others as projects rather than people with unique stories to be
heard We consider our great Christian task to be preaching rather
than assuming the listening posture of a servant We speak volumes
but we listen in snippets
When this reversal of the pattern persists we find ourselves
building lives that shelter us from having to truly listen We may
move into churches and neighborhoods full of people whose views
parallel our own avoiding the dissonance created by contrasting
voices by constructing theological and social echo chambers We
crystallize our beliefs and cease to ask questions Te great hope of
the Internet has been that dialogue will prevail that people withdifferent theologies worldviews and politics will log in to learn
grow and communicate with those who disagree with them Yet it
would seem that social media has helped people connect with like-
minded people and the unfortunate consequence has been the
intensifying and radicalizing of beliefs and the deeper entrenchment
of peoplersquos beliefs We settle into our own little truth corners
What the Bible portrays as a household of faith instead becomes
a scattering of encampments people who warm themselves by
their own fires whoop with their own war cries listen solely to
their appointed leaders and only interact with the other camps
when firing arrows
Psychology professor David Benner says that a major obstacle
to growth in our listening abilities is that most of us already thinkthat wersquore good listeners1 Tis book is predicated on the as-
sumption that most of us are not good listeners Terapists I know
say that many of their clients meet with them simply because they
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are not being listened to in their most important relationships
Without diminishing the value of professional therapy I wouldargue that the fact that we pay millions of dollars annually for
people to listen to us indicates our poverty in this arena Everyone
is talking but so few people are truly being heard
We need to learn how to listen because all the talking in the
world will not make our relationships what we want them to be
and it will not make us into the sort of people we want to be Our
longings for intimacy will not be satisfied through one-way con-
versations and interactions that feel like competitions Our desire
to be transformed will not be met through giving voice to all the
noise in our souls Our identities will not be discovered in finding
our own voice independent of others but in helping others find
their voices
We learn how to listen because we want to learn how to love We want to learn how to practice hospitality how to truly welcome
people into our lives We want to be story-hearers and not just
storytellers We want to find the internal quiet and stillness that
will open us to being changed We want to learn how to listen
because we want to become more human
I didnrsquot get serious about listening until I realized I wasnrsquot good
looking enough to get women to pay attention to me any other way
I am not proud to admit this In college I borrowed a copy of Men
Are from Mars Women Are from Venus from a friend2 Actually I
took it from her dorm room without telling her because I was
embarrassed to be reading it I still have it In that book I learned
that women are listeners and men are problem solvers I would later
dismiss that as a gender stereotype but at the time I used it to stoptrying to fix everything and just be with people I wooed women
with eye contact paraphrasing and active listening sounds
Listening at the start of a relationship is easy In the early
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Introduction 983089983091
months there is no way you can anticipate future conversations when
you sit gripping the arms of your chair teeth marks on your tonguesummoning all your will power to keep from interrupting someone
saying something you disagree with In those moments the God-
given ratio of two ears to one mouth seems highly unjust But that is
when the work of true listening really begins Itrsquos one thing to listen
at the beginning of our relationships but itrsquos another thing entirely
to continue to practice the discipline of listening before you speak
Te question that drives this book is how would our relation-
ships change and how would we change if we approached every
situation with the intention of listening first What if we ap-
proached our relationship with God as listeners What if we
viewed our relationship with nature as one of listening What if
we approached our relationships using our ears rather than our
mouths What if we sought to listen to our emotions before wepreached to them
Even though listening has been central to my ministries as
pastor chaplain and spiritual director the listening message is one
that I still need Tey say that pastors preach the sermon they most
need to hear and I am writing this book because I need to hear it
myself I need to remind myself that nothing has changed me like
listening It has not simply been the content that I have received
through listeningmdashthe words stories and whispers of othersmdashthat
has changed me it is the very act of listening Tere is something
about settling in and paying attention to someone or Someone
letting them have the floor and steer the conversation where they
want to go that is in itself transformative
Te very first word of the Rule of St Benedict that famous textthat has guided the life of monastic communities since the sixth
century is listen I want for us to put listening back where it be-
longs at the beginning in every aspect of life and faith Listening
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isnrsquot only something we do in the preparatory stages of life as
though itrsquos a phase we grow out of once we reach a certain age Noris it just a pleasant medicine that we need to inject a little more of
into our relationships Listening ought to be at the heart of our
spirituality our relationships our mission as the body of Christ our
relationship to culture and the world We are invited to approach
everything with the goal of listening first We are called to par-
ticipate in the listening life
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ONE
Te Listening Life
YOUR L IST OF L IFE-CHANGING BOOKS probably doesnrsquot include an ety-
mological dictionary Tat takes a peculiar kind of nerdiness that
few want to claim Yet I confess that one of the most significant
lessons I learned was from an etymological dictionary that hefty
resource that breaks down the origins of words Irsquom pretty sure the
unabridged edition I dropped onto a library table splintered the
legs underneath it but soon it began to repair some cracks that
existed in my mind Before I opened it with the help of a burly
librarian I knew that listening has the power to heal divisions It
can bridge the divide between people in conflict transform stale-
mates into learning opportunities and unearth solutions from
seemingly intractable situations But I had no idea that listening canheal the rift between those proverbial enemies hearing and doing
Tose bitter rivals are pitted against each other in a few Scrip-
tures with doing billed as the heavy favorite Paul says itrsquos not those
who hear the law but those who do the law who are righteous
James warns those hearers who deceive themselves into thinking
they donrsquot need to be doers Jesus concludes his Sermon on theMount by comparing people who hear his words but donrsquot act on
them to a house built on sand
Here are clear warnings that hearing by itself cannot be trusted
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and that doing is the badge of the faithful It would seem that
hearing is but a narrow channel pouring into the deep sea of doing Yet the etymological dictionary taught me that the sharp distinction
between hearing and doing is the result of human beings tearing
asunder what belongs together For this is its lesson the words listen
and obey have the same root In Latin the word ldquoobeyrdquo would not
exist without the word ldquolistenrdquo Te word we translate into English
as ldquoobediencerdquo literally means a ldquolistening from belowrdquo Obedience
is a deep listening a listening of the whole person a hearing with
your ears and with your heart and with your arms and legs
Tis etymological thrill ride does not stop with Latin Te deep
connection between listening and obedience also appears in Greek
and Hebrew the primary languages of the Bible Te biblical words
for ldquolistenrdquo or ldquohearrdquo can just as easily be translated and frequently
are as ldquoobeyrdquo or ldquogive heed tordquo Plus the root for the words trans-lated in the Greek New estament as ldquoobeyrdquo and ldquoobediencerdquo ismdash
you guessed itmdashlisten Listening and obedience are inextricably
unabashedly linked so much so that we can say that those who
donrsquot act on what they hear have not actually listened As seminary
professor Howard Hendricks put it ldquoBiblically speaking to hear
and not to do is not to hear at allrdquo1
LISTENING AS OBEDIENCE
Te interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in
our lives all the time Sound has the ability to ldquocommandrdquo us to
summon a response in us forcing us to take notice Unlike visual
stimuli certain sounds have an invasive inescapable quality to them
and we donrsquot have ldquoearlidsrdquo to protect us from them2 Our sense ofhearing is the alarm system of our bodies As neuroscientist Seth
Horowitz writes our brains process threatening sounds in a tenth
of a second ldquoelevating your heart rate hunching your shoulders
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he Listening Life 983089983095
and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going
to pounce and eat yourdquo
3
Our bodies involuntarily respond to orobey particular sounds Someone screams in pain and our bodies
jerk instantly in their direction An ambulance siren behind us has
us moving to the side of the road almost instinctually Te sound
of a jackhammer disrupts our train of thought invading our world
without permission Sound calls us to attention4 When someone
says our name in a loud and crowded room even if they are not
talking to us we turn toward them And then there is music A
song sweeps us up with its melody so that we canrsquot not be moved
by it We all know the power music has to shape our moods and
stir our emotions even causing us to make decisions and take
action Music becomes an imperative that our bodies and emotions
respond to Dance is our obedience to music
In our everyday speech we regularly communicate that listeninginvolves more than the sense of hearing Te complaint I hear most
from parents is that their children donrsquot listen to them My friend
Mark has a spirited two-year-old named Will who as Mark re-
ports ldquois in the phase of asserting his independence from us by
doing the exact opposite of what we say Itrsquos harder to get him to
listen nowrdquo When parents say their children wonrsquot listen to them
they mean they wonrsquot obey them Or who of us hasnrsquot sat in the
driverrsquos seat taken a route different from that recommended by the
person next to us gotten lost and later heard ldquoYou should have
listened to merdquo Meaning ldquoYou should have done what I told you
to dordquo No one said listening was always fun
Psychologist and marriage researcher John Gottman says that
one of the leading gauges for measuring a happy marriage is whether spouses allow themselves to be influenced by the other
person5 Are they changed by their relationship or do they become
more entrenched in their old ways Being influenced by another
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person is a sure indication of true listening because it means that
your choices and actions are following your ears Apparently lis-tening is important in marriage Who knew
New estament scholar Scot McKnight reports that the word
listen appears in the Bible over fifteen hundred times and that the
most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people
donrsquot listen6 Isaiah 983092983096983096 is particularly scathing
You have never heard you have never knownfrom of old your ear has not been opened
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously
and that from birth you were called a rebel
When your ears are closed you do not yield to Godrsquos commands
and you are called a rebel
Listening is never passive a stall or placeholder until doing stepsin and saves the day Biblical listening is a whole-hearted full-
bodied listening that not only vibrates our eardrums but echoes in
our souls and resonates out into our limbs Johnrsquos famous picture
of Jesus as the Word of God means that Jesusrsquo entire incarnated
life not only his parables and sermons is the expression of Godrsquos
mind His life is Godrsquos speech to us We are correspondingly askedto listen with our lives and we are not truly listening unless we are
responding to Jesus with all our heart mind soul and strength Tis
kind of listening is done on the move
HEARING AND LISTENING
Up until now I have been using hearing and listening inter-
changeably and for the sake of ease I will go back and forth be-tween those two words throughout this book Te Bible does not
sharply distinguish between the two though I suspect that when
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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Introduction
L ISTENING COMES F IRST In this life you listen even before you are
aware of it From within the womb an unborn child is already
listening to the voices of her parents After her birth she will
spend the next months hearing the words they speak whisper and
sing to her until one day she will start echoing those words one
imperfect syllable at a time
o master a foreign language we must hear it spoken by others
before we can reproduce the sounds our ears have heard Virtuoso
musicians in their early years are immersed in music hearing the
chord progressions and melodies that will lodge in their souls and
one day sound from their instruments Much of our formative years
is spent in classrooms listening to teachers in homes listening to ourparents and in church listening to the stories the Bible tells us
When we meet the primeval universe in Genesis we learn that
it is unformed and chaotic but that somehow it has an ear because
its first action is to listen to the Voice that pierces the darkness
God commands light and the cosmos hears and obeys and through
its acts of listening order and harmony supplant the watery abyssSix days into the making of this listening world God creates the
first humans and their original act is to hear the blessing to
populate the earth with other image-bearers and God-listeners
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Listening is foundational to what it means to be human
Troughout the Bible listening is the central act of the peopleof God Tey are those who are gathered and formed by his voice
and held together by his word Tey hear his promises and judg-
ments instructions and warnings reassurances and exhortations
Te centerpiece of Israelrsquos prayer life the Shema begins with the
word hear ldquoHear O Israel Te L983151983154983140 our God the L983151983154983140 is onerdquo
(Deuteronomy 983094983092 983150983145983158) Te Hebrew word shema means ldquohearrdquo
Jewish children are instructed to rehearse these words as they rise
in the morning and as they fall asleep From dawn until dusk their
lives are made by listening
You become a disciple by hearing Listening is the first act of
discipleship as fishermen drop their nets and follow when Jesus
calls and listening is the core of their apprenticeship as they listen
their way from Galilee to Jerusalem Paul reminds us that hearingmust come before faith indeed that faith proceeds from hearing
How can someone believe he presses in someone they have never
heard of ldquoSo faith comes from what is heard and what is heard
comes through the word of Christrdquo (Romans 983089983088983089983095) Te apostle
James famously counsels his hearers to be quick to listen slow to
speak ( James 983089983089983097) Ancient wisdom cautions us that ldquoif one gives
answer before hearing it is folly and shamerdquo (Proverbs 983089983096983089983091) Tis
is the pattern that life commands Listen before you speak Learn
before you teach Hear the call before you lead Absorb the word
before you preach it
But somewhere along the way we start to violate the natural
order of things Speaking our minds and asserting ourselves take
priority over listening We interrupt someone else because we areconvinced we already know what he or she is going to say We
begin to take up more space than we allow for others We consider
ourselves experts on topics without anything more to learn We tell
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Introduction 983089983089
God what to give rather than asking what God wants to give We
participate by speaking and sharing and we assert our identities bytaking verbal stands We shout our messages from the rooftops
without knowing who is listening and what they need We view
others as projects rather than people with unique stories to be
heard We consider our great Christian task to be preaching rather
than assuming the listening posture of a servant We speak volumes
but we listen in snippets
When this reversal of the pattern persists we find ourselves
building lives that shelter us from having to truly listen We may
move into churches and neighborhoods full of people whose views
parallel our own avoiding the dissonance created by contrasting
voices by constructing theological and social echo chambers We
crystallize our beliefs and cease to ask questions Te great hope of
the Internet has been that dialogue will prevail that people withdifferent theologies worldviews and politics will log in to learn
grow and communicate with those who disagree with them Yet it
would seem that social media has helped people connect with like-
minded people and the unfortunate consequence has been the
intensifying and radicalizing of beliefs and the deeper entrenchment
of peoplersquos beliefs We settle into our own little truth corners
What the Bible portrays as a household of faith instead becomes
a scattering of encampments people who warm themselves by
their own fires whoop with their own war cries listen solely to
their appointed leaders and only interact with the other camps
when firing arrows
Psychology professor David Benner says that a major obstacle
to growth in our listening abilities is that most of us already thinkthat wersquore good listeners1 Tis book is predicated on the as-
sumption that most of us are not good listeners Terapists I know
say that many of their clients meet with them simply because they
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are not being listened to in their most important relationships
Without diminishing the value of professional therapy I wouldargue that the fact that we pay millions of dollars annually for
people to listen to us indicates our poverty in this arena Everyone
is talking but so few people are truly being heard
We need to learn how to listen because all the talking in the
world will not make our relationships what we want them to be
and it will not make us into the sort of people we want to be Our
longings for intimacy will not be satisfied through one-way con-
versations and interactions that feel like competitions Our desire
to be transformed will not be met through giving voice to all the
noise in our souls Our identities will not be discovered in finding
our own voice independent of others but in helping others find
their voices
We learn how to listen because we want to learn how to love We want to learn how to practice hospitality how to truly welcome
people into our lives We want to be story-hearers and not just
storytellers We want to find the internal quiet and stillness that
will open us to being changed We want to learn how to listen
because we want to become more human
I didnrsquot get serious about listening until I realized I wasnrsquot good
looking enough to get women to pay attention to me any other way
I am not proud to admit this In college I borrowed a copy of Men
Are from Mars Women Are from Venus from a friend2 Actually I
took it from her dorm room without telling her because I was
embarrassed to be reading it I still have it In that book I learned
that women are listeners and men are problem solvers I would later
dismiss that as a gender stereotype but at the time I used it to stoptrying to fix everything and just be with people I wooed women
with eye contact paraphrasing and active listening sounds
Listening at the start of a relationship is easy In the early
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Introduction 983089983091
months there is no way you can anticipate future conversations when
you sit gripping the arms of your chair teeth marks on your tonguesummoning all your will power to keep from interrupting someone
saying something you disagree with In those moments the God-
given ratio of two ears to one mouth seems highly unjust But that is
when the work of true listening really begins Itrsquos one thing to listen
at the beginning of our relationships but itrsquos another thing entirely
to continue to practice the discipline of listening before you speak
Te question that drives this book is how would our relation-
ships change and how would we change if we approached every
situation with the intention of listening first What if we ap-
proached our relationship with God as listeners What if we
viewed our relationship with nature as one of listening What if
we approached our relationships using our ears rather than our
mouths What if we sought to listen to our emotions before wepreached to them
Even though listening has been central to my ministries as
pastor chaplain and spiritual director the listening message is one
that I still need Tey say that pastors preach the sermon they most
need to hear and I am writing this book because I need to hear it
myself I need to remind myself that nothing has changed me like
listening It has not simply been the content that I have received
through listeningmdashthe words stories and whispers of othersmdashthat
has changed me it is the very act of listening Tere is something
about settling in and paying attention to someone or Someone
letting them have the floor and steer the conversation where they
want to go that is in itself transformative
Te very first word of the Rule of St Benedict that famous textthat has guided the life of monastic communities since the sixth
century is listen I want for us to put listening back where it be-
longs at the beginning in every aspect of life and faith Listening
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isnrsquot only something we do in the preparatory stages of life as
though itrsquos a phase we grow out of once we reach a certain age Noris it just a pleasant medicine that we need to inject a little more of
into our relationships Listening ought to be at the heart of our
spirituality our relationships our mission as the body of Christ our
relationship to culture and the world We are invited to approach
everything with the goal of listening first We are called to par-
ticipate in the listening life
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ONE
Te Listening Life
YOUR L IST OF L IFE-CHANGING BOOKS probably doesnrsquot include an ety-
mological dictionary Tat takes a peculiar kind of nerdiness that
few want to claim Yet I confess that one of the most significant
lessons I learned was from an etymological dictionary that hefty
resource that breaks down the origins of words Irsquom pretty sure the
unabridged edition I dropped onto a library table splintered the
legs underneath it but soon it began to repair some cracks that
existed in my mind Before I opened it with the help of a burly
librarian I knew that listening has the power to heal divisions It
can bridge the divide between people in conflict transform stale-
mates into learning opportunities and unearth solutions from
seemingly intractable situations But I had no idea that listening canheal the rift between those proverbial enemies hearing and doing
Tose bitter rivals are pitted against each other in a few Scrip-
tures with doing billed as the heavy favorite Paul says itrsquos not those
who hear the law but those who do the law who are righteous
James warns those hearers who deceive themselves into thinking
they donrsquot need to be doers Jesus concludes his Sermon on theMount by comparing people who hear his words but donrsquot act on
them to a house built on sand
Here are clear warnings that hearing by itself cannot be trusted
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and that doing is the badge of the faithful It would seem that
hearing is but a narrow channel pouring into the deep sea of doing Yet the etymological dictionary taught me that the sharp distinction
between hearing and doing is the result of human beings tearing
asunder what belongs together For this is its lesson the words listen
and obey have the same root In Latin the word ldquoobeyrdquo would not
exist without the word ldquolistenrdquo Te word we translate into English
as ldquoobediencerdquo literally means a ldquolistening from belowrdquo Obedience
is a deep listening a listening of the whole person a hearing with
your ears and with your heart and with your arms and legs
Tis etymological thrill ride does not stop with Latin Te deep
connection between listening and obedience also appears in Greek
and Hebrew the primary languages of the Bible Te biblical words
for ldquolistenrdquo or ldquohearrdquo can just as easily be translated and frequently
are as ldquoobeyrdquo or ldquogive heed tordquo Plus the root for the words trans-lated in the Greek New estament as ldquoobeyrdquo and ldquoobediencerdquo ismdash
you guessed itmdashlisten Listening and obedience are inextricably
unabashedly linked so much so that we can say that those who
donrsquot act on what they hear have not actually listened As seminary
professor Howard Hendricks put it ldquoBiblically speaking to hear
and not to do is not to hear at allrdquo1
LISTENING AS OBEDIENCE
Te interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in
our lives all the time Sound has the ability to ldquocommandrdquo us to
summon a response in us forcing us to take notice Unlike visual
stimuli certain sounds have an invasive inescapable quality to them
and we donrsquot have ldquoearlidsrdquo to protect us from them2 Our sense ofhearing is the alarm system of our bodies As neuroscientist Seth
Horowitz writes our brains process threatening sounds in a tenth
of a second ldquoelevating your heart rate hunching your shoulders
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he Listening Life 983089983095
and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going
to pounce and eat yourdquo
3
Our bodies involuntarily respond to orobey particular sounds Someone screams in pain and our bodies
jerk instantly in their direction An ambulance siren behind us has
us moving to the side of the road almost instinctually Te sound
of a jackhammer disrupts our train of thought invading our world
without permission Sound calls us to attention4 When someone
says our name in a loud and crowded room even if they are not
talking to us we turn toward them And then there is music A
song sweeps us up with its melody so that we canrsquot not be moved
by it We all know the power music has to shape our moods and
stir our emotions even causing us to make decisions and take
action Music becomes an imperative that our bodies and emotions
respond to Dance is our obedience to music
In our everyday speech we regularly communicate that listeninginvolves more than the sense of hearing Te complaint I hear most
from parents is that their children donrsquot listen to them My friend
Mark has a spirited two-year-old named Will who as Mark re-
ports ldquois in the phase of asserting his independence from us by
doing the exact opposite of what we say Itrsquos harder to get him to
listen nowrdquo When parents say their children wonrsquot listen to them
they mean they wonrsquot obey them Or who of us hasnrsquot sat in the
driverrsquos seat taken a route different from that recommended by the
person next to us gotten lost and later heard ldquoYou should have
listened to merdquo Meaning ldquoYou should have done what I told you
to dordquo No one said listening was always fun
Psychologist and marriage researcher John Gottman says that
one of the leading gauges for measuring a happy marriage is whether spouses allow themselves to be influenced by the other
person5 Are they changed by their relationship or do they become
more entrenched in their old ways Being influenced by another
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person is a sure indication of true listening because it means that
your choices and actions are following your ears Apparently lis-tening is important in marriage Who knew
New estament scholar Scot McKnight reports that the word
listen appears in the Bible over fifteen hundred times and that the
most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people
donrsquot listen6 Isaiah 983092983096983096 is particularly scathing
You have never heard you have never knownfrom of old your ear has not been opened
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously
and that from birth you were called a rebel
When your ears are closed you do not yield to Godrsquos commands
and you are called a rebel
Listening is never passive a stall or placeholder until doing stepsin and saves the day Biblical listening is a whole-hearted full-
bodied listening that not only vibrates our eardrums but echoes in
our souls and resonates out into our limbs Johnrsquos famous picture
of Jesus as the Word of God means that Jesusrsquo entire incarnated
life not only his parables and sermons is the expression of Godrsquos
mind His life is Godrsquos speech to us We are correspondingly askedto listen with our lives and we are not truly listening unless we are
responding to Jesus with all our heart mind soul and strength Tis
kind of listening is done on the move
HEARING AND LISTENING
Up until now I have been using hearing and listening inter-
changeably and for the sake of ease I will go back and forth be-tween those two words throughout this book Te Bible does not
sharply distinguish between the two though I suspect that when
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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983090983088 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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Listening is foundational to what it means to be human
Troughout the Bible listening is the central act of the peopleof God Tey are those who are gathered and formed by his voice
and held together by his word Tey hear his promises and judg-
ments instructions and warnings reassurances and exhortations
Te centerpiece of Israelrsquos prayer life the Shema begins with the
word hear ldquoHear O Israel Te L983151983154983140 our God the L983151983154983140 is onerdquo
(Deuteronomy 983094983092 983150983145983158) Te Hebrew word shema means ldquohearrdquo
Jewish children are instructed to rehearse these words as they rise
in the morning and as they fall asleep From dawn until dusk their
lives are made by listening
You become a disciple by hearing Listening is the first act of
discipleship as fishermen drop their nets and follow when Jesus
calls and listening is the core of their apprenticeship as they listen
their way from Galilee to Jerusalem Paul reminds us that hearingmust come before faith indeed that faith proceeds from hearing
How can someone believe he presses in someone they have never
heard of ldquoSo faith comes from what is heard and what is heard
comes through the word of Christrdquo (Romans 983089983088983089983095) Te apostle
James famously counsels his hearers to be quick to listen slow to
speak ( James 983089983089983097) Ancient wisdom cautions us that ldquoif one gives
answer before hearing it is folly and shamerdquo (Proverbs 983089983096983089983091) Tis
is the pattern that life commands Listen before you speak Learn
before you teach Hear the call before you lead Absorb the word
before you preach it
But somewhere along the way we start to violate the natural
order of things Speaking our minds and asserting ourselves take
priority over listening We interrupt someone else because we areconvinced we already know what he or she is going to say We
begin to take up more space than we allow for others We consider
ourselves experts on topics without anything more to learn We tell
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Introduction 983089983089
God what to give rather than asking what God wants to give We
participate by speaking and sharing and we assert our identities bytaking verbal stands We shout our messages from the rooftops
without knowing who is listening and what they need We view
others as projects rather than people with unique stories to be
heard We consider our great Christian task to be preaching rather
than assuming the listening posture of a servant We speak volumes
but we listen in snippets
When this reversal of the pattern persists we find ourselves
building lives that shelter us from having to truly listen We may
move into churches and neighborhoods full of people whose views
parallel our own avoiding the dissonance created by contrasting
voices by constructing theological and social echo chambers We
crystallize our beliefs and cease to ask questions Te great hope of
the Internet has been that dialogue will prevail that people withdifferent theologies worldviews and politics will log in to learn
grow and communicate with those who disagree with them Yet it
would seem that social media has helped people connect with like-
minded people and the unfortunate consequence has been the
intensifying and radicalizing of beliefs and the deeper entrenchment
of peoplersquos beliefs We settle into our own little truth corners
What the Bible portrays as a household of faith instead becomes
a scattering of encampments people who warm themselves by
their own fires whoop with their own war cries listen solely to
their appointed leaders and only interact with the other camps
when firing arrows
Psychology professor David Benner says that a major obstacle
to growth in our listening abilities is that most of us already thinkthat wersquore good listeners1 Tis book is predicated on the as-
sumption that most of us are not good listeners Terapists I know
say that many of their clients meet with them simply because they
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are not being listened to in their most important relationships
Without diminishing the value of professional therapy I wouldargue that the fact that we pay millions of dollars annually for
people to listen to us indicates our poverty in this arena Everyone
is talking but so few people are truly being heard
We need to learn how to listen because all the talking in the
world will not make our relationships what we want them to be
and it will not make us into the sort of people we want to be Our
longings for intimacy will not be satisfied through one-way con-
versations and interactions that feel like competitions Our desire
to be transformed will not be met through giving voice to all the
noise in our souls Our identities will not be discovered in finding
our own voice independent of others but in helping others find
their voices
We learn how to listen because we want to learn how to love We want to learn how to practice hospitality how to truly welcome
people into our lives We want to be story-hearers and not just
storytellers We want to find the internal quiet and stillness that
will open us to being changed We want to learn how to listen
because we want to become more human
I didnrsquot get serious about listening until I realized I wasnrsquot good
looking enough to get women to pay attention to me any other way
I am not proud to admit this In college I borrowed a copy of Men
Are from Mars Women Are from Venus from a friend2 Actually I
took it from her dorm room without telling her because I was
embarrassed to be reading it I still have it In that book I learned
that women are listeners and men are problem solvers I would later
dismiss that as a gender stereotype but at the time I used it to stoptrying to fix everything and just be with people I wooed women
with eye contact paraphrasing and active listening sounds
Listening at the start of a relationship is easy In the early
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Introduction 983089983091
months there is no way you can anticipate future conversations when
you sit gripping the arms of your chair teeth marks on your tonguesummoning all your will power to keep from interrupting someone
saying something you disagree with In those moments the God-
given ratio of two ears to one mouth seems highly unjust But that is
when the work of true listening really begins Itrsquos one thing to listen
at the beginning of our relationships but itrsquos another thing entirely
to continue to practice the discipline of listening before you speak
Te question that drives this book is how would our relation-
ships change and how would we change if we approached every
situation with the intention of listening first What if we ap-
proached our relationship with God as listeners What if we
viewed our relationship with nature as one of listening What if
we approached our relationships using our ears rather than our
mouths What if we sought to listen to our emotions before wepreached to them
Even though listening has been central to my ministries as
pastor chaplain and spiritual director the listening message is one
that I still need Tey say that pastors preach the sermon they most
need to hear and I am writing this book because I need to hear it
myself I need to remind myself that nothing has changed me like
listening It has not simply been the content that I have received
through listeningmdashthe words stories and whispers of othersmdashthat
has changed me it is the very act of listening Tere is something
about settling in and paying attention to someone or Someone
letting them have the floor and steer the conversation where they
want to go that is in itself transformative
Te very first word of the Rule of St Benedict that famous textthat has guided the life of monastic communities since the sixth
century is listen I want for us to put listening back where it be-
longs at the beginning in every aspect of life and faith Listening
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isnrsquot only something we do in the preparatory stages of life as
though itrsquos a phase we grow out of once we reach a certain age Noris it just a pleasant medicine that we need to inject a little more of
into our relationships Listening ought to be at the heart of our
spirituality our relationships our mission as the body of Christ our
relationship to culture and the world We are invited to approach
everything with the goal of listening first We are called to par-
ticipate in the listening life
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ONE
Te Listening Life
YOUR L IST OF L IFE-CHANGING BOOKS probably doesnrsquot include an ety-
mological dictionary Tat takes a peculiar kind of nerdiness that
few want to claim Yet I confess that one of the most significant
lessons I learned was from an etymological dictionary that hefty
resource that breaks down the origins of words Irsquom pretty sure the
unabridged edition I dropped onto a library table splintered the
legs underneath it but soon it began to repair some cracks that
existed in my mind Before I opened it with the help of a burly
librarian I knew that listening has the power to heal divisions It
can bridge the divide between people in conflict transform stale-
mates into learning opportunities and unearth solutions from
seemingly intractable situations But I had no idea that listening canheal the rift between those proverbial enemies hearing and doing
Tose bitter rivals are pitted against each other in a few Scrip-
tures with doing billed as the heavy favorite Paul says itrsquos not those
who hear the law but those who do the law who are righteous
James warns those hearers who deceive themselves into thinking
they donrsquot need to be doers Jesus concludes his Sermon on theMount by comparing people who hear his words but donrsquot act on
them to a house built on sand
Here are clear warnings that hearing by itself cannot be trusted
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and that doing is the badge of the faithful It would seem that
hearing is but a narrow channel pouring into the deep sea of doing Yet the etymological dictionary taught me that the sharp distinction
between hearing and doing is the result of human beings tearing
asunder what belongs together For this is its lesson the words listen
and obey have the same root In Latin the word ldquoobeyrdquo would not
exist without the word ldquolistenrdquo Te word we translate into English
as ldquoobediencerdquo literally means a ldquolistening from belowrdquo Obedience
is a deep listening a listening of the whole person a hearing with
your ears and with your heart and with your arms and legs
Tis etymological thrill ride does not stop with Latin Te deep
connection between listening and obedience also appears in Greek
and Hebrew the primary languages of the Bible Te biblical words
for ldquolistenrdquo or ldquohearrdquo can just as easily be translated and frequently
are as ldquoobeyrdquo or ldquogive heed tordquo Plus the root for the words trans-lated in the Greek New estament as ldquoobeyrdquo and ldquoobediencerdquo ismdash
you guessed itmdashlisten Listening and obedience are inextricably
unabashedly linked so much so that we can say that those who
donrsquot act on what they hear have not actually listened As seminary
professor Howard Hendricks put it ldquoBiblically speaking to hear
and not to do is not to hear at allrdquo1
LISTENING AS OBEDIENCE
Te interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in
our lives all the time Sound has the ability to ldquocommandrdquo us to
summon a response in us forcing us to take notice Unlike visual
stimuli certain sounds have an invasive inescapable quality to them
and we donrsquot have ldquoearlidsrdquo to protect us from them2 Our sense ofhearing is the alarm system of our bodies As neuroscientist Seth
Horowitz writes our brains process threatening sounds in a tenth
of a second ldquoelevating your heart rate hunching your shoulders
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he Listening Life 983089983095
and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going
to pounce and eat yourdquo
3
Our bodies involuntarily respond to orobey particular sounds Someone screams in pain and our bodies
jerk instantly in their direction An ambulance siren behind us has
us moving to the side of the road almost instinctually Te sound
of a jackhammer disrupts our train of thought invading our world
without permission Sound calls us to attention4 When someone
says our name in a loud and crowded room even if they are not
talking to us we turn toward them And then there is music A
song sweeps us up with its melody so that we canrsquot not be moved
by it We all know the power music has to shape our moods and
stir our emotions even causing us to make decisions and take
action Music becomes an imperative that our bodies and emotions
respond to Dance is our obedience to music
In our everyday speech we regularly communicate that listeninginvolves more than the sense of hearing Te complaint I hear most
from parents is that their children donrsquot listen to them My friend
Mark has a spirited two-year-old named Will who as Mark re-
ports ldquois in the phase of asserting his independence from us by
doing the exact opposite of what we say Itrsquos harder to get him to
listen nowrdquo When parents say their children wonrsquot listen to them
they mean they wonrsquot obey them Or who of us hasnrsquot sat in the
driverrsquos seat taken a route different from that recommended by the
person next to us gotten lost and later heard ldquoYou should have
listened to merdquo Meaning ldquoYou should have done what I told you
to dordquo No one said listening was always fun
Psychologist and marriage researcher John Gottman says that
one of the leading gauges for measuring a happy marriage is whether spouses allow themselves to be influenced by the other
person5 Are they changed by their relationship or do they become
more entrenched in their old ways Being influenced by another
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person is a sure indication of true listening because it means that
your choices and actions are following your ears Apparently lis-tening is important in marriage Who knew
New estament scholar Scot McKnight reports that the word
listen appears in the Bible over fifteen hundred times and that the
most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people
donrsquot listen6 Isaiah 983092983096983096 is particularly scathing
You have never heard you have never knownfrom of old your ear has not been opened
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously
and that from birth you were called a rebel
When your ears are closed you do not yield to Godrsquos commands
and you are called a rebel
Listening is never passive a stall or placeholder until doing stepsin and saves the day Biblical listening is a whole-hearted full-
bodied listening that not only vibrates our eardrums but echoes in
our souls and resonates out into our limbs Johnrsquos famous picture
of Jesus as the Word of God means that Jesusrsquo entire incarnated
life not only his parables and sermons is the expression of Godrsquos
mind His life is Godrsquos speech to us We are correspondingly askedto listen with our lives and we are not truly listening unless we are
responding to Jesus with all our heart mind soul and strength Tis
kind of listening is done on the move
HEARING AND LISTENING
Up until now I have been using hearing and listening inter-
changeably and for the sake of ease I will go back and forth be-tween those two words throughout this book Te Bible does not
sharply distinguish between the two though I suspect that when
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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Introduction 983089983089
God what to give rather than asking what God wants to give We
participate by speaking and sharing and we assert our identities bytaking verbal stands We shout our messages from the rooftops
without knowing who is listening and what they need We view
others as projects rather than people with unique stories to be
heard We consider our great Christian task to be preaching rather
than assuming the listening posture of a servant We speak volumes
but we listen in snippets
When this reversal of the pattern persists we find ourselves
building lives that shelter us from having to truly listen We may
move into churches and neighborhoods full of people whose views
parallel our own avoiding the dissonance created by contrasting
voices by constructing theological and social echo chambers We
crystallize our beliefs and cease to ask questions Te great hope of
the Internet has been that dialogue will prevail that people withdifferent theologies worldviews and politics will log in to learn
grow and communicate with those who disagree with them Yet it
would seem that social media has helped people connect with like-
minded people and the unfortunate consequence has been the
intensifying and radicalizing of beliefs and the deeper entrenchment
of peoplersquos beliefs We settle into our own little truth corners
What the Bible portrays as a household of faith instead becomes
a scattering of encampments people who warm themselves by
their own fires whoop with their own war cries listen solely to
their appointed leaders and only interact with the other camps
when firing arrows
Psychology professor David Benner says that a major obstacle
to growth in our listening abilities is that most of us already thinkthat wersquore good listeners1 Tis book is predicated on the as-
sumption that most of us are not good listeners Terapists I know
say that many of their clients meet with them simply because they
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are not being listened to in their most important relationships
Without diminishing the value of professional therapy I wouldargue that the fact that we pay millions of dollars annually for
people to listen to us indicates our poverty in this arena Everyone
is talking but so few people are truly being heard
We need to learn how to listen because all the talking in the
world will not make our relationships what we want them to be
and it will not make us into the sort of people we want to be Our
longings for intimacy will not be satisfied through one-way con-
versations and interactions that feel like competitions Our desire
to be transformed will not be met through giving voice to all the
noise in our souls Our identities will not be discovered in finding
our own voice independent of others but in helping others find
their voices
We learn how to listen because we want to learn how to love We want to learn how to practice hospitality how to truly welcome
people into our lives We want to be story-hearers and not just
storytellers We want to find the internal quiet and stillness that
will open us to being changed We want to learn how to listen
because we want to become more human
I didnrsquot get serious about listening until I realized I wasnrsquot good
looking enough to get women to pay attention to me any other way
I am not proud to admit this In college I borrowed a copy of Men
Are from Mars Women Are from Venus from a friend2 Actually I
took it from her dorm room without telling her because I was
embarrassed to be reading it I still have it In that book I learned
that women are listeners and men are problem solvers I would later
dismiss that as a gender stereotype but at the time I used it to stoptrying to fix everything and just be with people I wooed women
with eye contact paraphrasing and active listening sounds
Listening at the start of a relationship is easy In the early
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Introduction 983089983091
months there is no way you can anticipate future conversations when
you sit gripping the arms of your chair teeth marks on your tonguesummoning all your will power to keep from interrupting someone
saying something you disagree with In those moments the God-
given ratio of two ears to one mouth seems highly unjust But that is
when the work of true listening really begins Itrsquos one thing to listen
at the beginning of our relationships but itrsquos another thing entirely
to continue to practice the discipline of listening before you speak
Te question that drives this book is how would our relation-
ships change and how would we change if we approached every
situation with the intention of listening first What if we ap-
proached our relationship with God as listeners What if we
viewed our relationship with nature as one of listening What if
we approached our relationships using our ears rather than our
mouths What if we sought to listen to our emotions before wepreached to them
Even though listening has been central to my ministries as
pastor chaplain and spiritual director the listening message is one
that I still need Tey say that pastors preach the sermon they most
need to hear and I am writing this book because I need to hear it
myself I need to remind myself that nothing has changed me like
listening It has not simply been the content that I have received
through listeningmdashthe words stories and whispers of othersmdashthat
has changed me it is the very act of listening Tere is something
about settling in and paying attention to someone or Someone
letting them have the floor and steer the conversation where they
want to go that is in itself transformative
Te very first word of the Rule of St Benedict that famous textthat has guided the life of monastic communities since the sixth
century is listen I want for us to put listening back where it be-
longs at the beginning in every aspect of life and faith Listening
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isnrsquot only something we do in the preparatory stages of life as
though itrsquos a phase we grow out of once we reach a certain age Noris it just a pleasant medicine that we need to inject a little more of
into our relationships Listening ought to be at the heart of our
spirituality our relationships our mission as the body of Christ our
relationship to culture and the world We are invited to approach
everything with the goal of listening first We are called to par-
ticipate in the listening life
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ONE
Te Listening Life
YOUR L IST OF L IFE-CHANGING BOOKS probably doesnrsquot include an ety-
mological dictionary Tat takes a peculiar kind of nerdiness that
few want to claim Yet I confess that one of the most significant
lessons I learned was from an etymological dictionary that hefty
resource that breaks down the origins of words Irsquom pretty sure the
unabridged edition I dropped onto a library table splintered the
legs underneath it but soon it began to repair some cracks that
existed in my mind Before I opened it with the help of a burly
librarian I knew that listening has the power to heal divisions It
can bridge the divide between people in conflict transform stale-
mates into learning opportunities and unearth solutions from
seemingly intractable situations But I had no idea that listening canheal the rift between those proverbial enemies hearing and doing
Tose bitter rivals are pitted against each other in a few Scrip-
tures with doing billed as the heavy favorite Paul says itrsquos not those
who hear the law but those who do the law who are righteous
James warns those hearers who deceive themselves into thinking
they donrsquot need to be doers Jesus concludes his Sermon on theMount by comparing people who hear his words but donrsquot act on
them to a house built on sand
Here are clear warnings that hearing by itself cannot be trusted
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and that doing is the badge of the faithful It would seem that
hearing is but a narrow channel pouring into the deep sea of doing Yet the etymological dictionary taught me that the sharp distinction
between hearing and doing is the result of human beings tearing
asunder what belongs together For this is its lesson the words listen
and obey have the same root In Latin the word ldquoobeyrdquo would not
exist without the word ldquolistenrdquo Te word we translate into English
as ldquoobediencerdquo literally means a ldquolistening from belowrdquo Obedience
is a deep listening a listening of the whole person a hearing with
your ears and with your heart and with your arms and legs
Tis etymological thrill ride does not stop with Latin Te deep
connection between listening and obedience also appears in Greek
and Hebrew the primary languages of the Bible Te biblical words
for ldquolistenrdquo or ldquohearrdquo can just as easily be translated and frequently
are as ldquoobeyrdquo or ldquogive heed tordquo Plus the root for the words trans-lated in the Greek New estament as ldquoobeyrdquo and ldquoobediencerdquo ismdash
you guessed itmdashlisten Listening and obedience are inextricably
unabashedly linked so much so that we can say that those who
donrsquot act on what they hear have not actually listened As seminary
professor Howard Hendricks put it ldquoBiblically speaking to hear
and not to do is not to hear at allrdquo1
LISTENING AS OBEDIENCE
Te interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in
our lives all the time Sound has the ability to ldquocommandrdquo us to
summon a response in us forcing us to take notice Unlike visual
stimuli certain sounds have an invasive inescapable quality to them
and we donrsquot have ldquoearlidsrdquo to protect us from them2 Our sense ofhearing is the alarm system of our bodies As neuroscientist Seth
Horowitz writes our brains process threatening sounds in a tenth
of a second ldquoelevating your heart rate hunching your shoulders
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he Listening Life 983089983095
and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going
to pounce and eat yourdquo
3
Our bodies involuntarily respond to orobey particular sounds Someone screams in pain and our bodies
jerk instantly in their direction An ambulance siren behind us has
us moving to the side of the road almost instinctually Te sound
of a jackhammer disrupts our train of thought invading our world
without permission Sound calls us to attention4 When someone
says our name in a loud and crowded room even if they are not
talking to us we turn toward them And then there is music A
song sweeps us up with its melody so that we canrsquot not be moved
by it We all know the power music has to shape our moods and
stir our emotions even causing us to make decisions and take
action Music becomes an imperative that our bodies and emotions
respond to Dance is our obedience to music
In our everyday speech we regularly communicate that listeninginvolves more than the sense of hearing Te complaint I hear most
from parents is that their children donrsquot listen to them My friend
Mark has a spirited two-year-old named Will who as Mark re-
ports ldquois in the phase of asserting his independence from us by
doing the exact opposite of what we say Itrsquos harder to get him to
listen nowrdquo When parents say their children wonrsquot listen to them
they mean they wonrsquot obey them Or who of us hasnrsquot sat in the
driverrsquos seat taken a route different from that recommended by the
person next to us gotten lost and later heard ldquoYou should have
listened to merdquo Meaning ldquoYou should have done what I told you
to dordquo No one said listening was always fun
Psychologist and marriage researcher John Gottman says that
one of the leading gauges for measuring a happy marriage is whether spouses allow themselves to be influenced by the other
person5 Are they changed by their relationship or do they become
more entrenched in their old ways Being influenced by another
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person is a sure indication of true listening because it means that
your choices and actions are following your ears Apparently lis-tening is important in marriage Who knew
New estament scholar Scot McKnight reports that the word
listen appears in the Bible over fifteen hundred times and that the
most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people
donrsquot listen6 Isaiah 983092983096983096 is particularly scathing
You have never heard you have never knownfrom of old your ear has not been opened
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously
and that from birth you were called a rebel
When your ears are closed you do not yield to Godrsquos commands
and you are called a rebel
Listening is never passive a stall or placeholder until doing stepsin and saves the day Biblical listening is a whole-hearted full-
bodied listening that not only vibrates our eardrums but echoes in
our souls and resonates out into our limbs Johnrsquos famous picture
of Jesus as the Word of God means that Jesusrsquo entire incarnated
life not only his parables and sermons is the expression of Godrsquos
mind His life is Godrsquos speech to us We are correspondingly askedto listen with our lives and we are not truly listening unless we are
responding to Jesus with all our heart mind soul and strength Tis
kind of listening is done on the move
HEARING AND LISTENING
Up until now I have been using hearing and listening inter-
changeably and for the sake of ease I will go back and forth be-tween those two words throughout this book Te Bible does not
sharply distinguish between the two though I suspect that when
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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are not being listened to in their most important relationships
Without diminishing the value of professional therapy I wouldargue that the fact that we pay millions of dollars annually for
people to listen to us indicates our poverty in this arena Everyone
is talking but so few people are truly being heard
We need to learn how to listen because all the talking in the
world will not make our relationships what we want them to be
and it will not make us into the sort of people we want to be Our
longings for intimacy will not be satisfied through one-way con-
versations and interactions that feel like competitions Our desire
to be transformed will not be met through giving voice to all the
noise in our souls Our identities will not be discovered in finding
our own voice independent of others but in helping others find
their voices
We learn how to listen because we want to learn how to love We want to learn how to practice hospitality how to truly welcome
people into our lives We want to be story-hearers and not just
storytellers We want to find the internal quiet and stillness that
will open us to being changed We want to learn how to listen
because we want to become more human
I didnrsquot get serious about listening until I realized I wasnrsquot good
looking enough to get women to pay attention to me any other way
I am not proud to admit this In college I borrowed a copy of Men
Are from Mars Women Are from Venus from a friend2 Actually I
took it from her dorm room without telling her because I was
embarrassed to be reading it I still have it In that book I learned
that women are listeners and men are problem solvers I would later
dismiss that as a gender stereotype but at the time I used it to stoptrying to fix everything and just be with people I wooed women
with eye contact paraphrasing and active listening sounds
Listening at the start of a relationship is easy In the early
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Introduction 983089983091
months there is no way you can anticipate future conversations when
you sit gripping the arms of your chair teeth marks on your tonguesummoning all your will power to keep from interrupting someone
saying something you disagree with In those moments the God-
given ratio of two ears to one mouth seems highly unjust But that is
when the work of true listening really begins Itrsquos one thing to listen
at the beginning of our relationships but itrsquos another thing entirely
to continue to practice the discipline of listening before you speak
Te question that drives this book is how would our relation-
ships change and how would we change if we approached every
situation with the intention of listening first What if we ap-
proached our relationship with God as listeners What if we
viewed our relationship with nature as one of listening What if
we approached our relationships using our ears rather than our
mouths What if we sought to listen to our emotions before wepreached to them
Even though listening has been central to my ministries as
pastor chaplain and spiritual director the listening message is one
that I still need Tey say that pastors preach the sermon they most
need to hear and I am writing this book because I need to hear it
myself I need to remind myself that nothing has changed me like
listening It has not simply been the content that I have received
through listeningmdashthe words stories and whispers of othersmdashthat
has changed me it is the very act of listening Tere is something
about settling in and paying attention to someone or Someone
letting them have the floor and steer the conversation where they
want to go that is in itself transformative
Te very first word of the Rule of St Benedict that famous textthat has guided the life of monastic communities since the sixth
century is listen I want for us to put listening back where it be-
longs at the beginning in every aspect of life and faith Listening
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isnrsquot only something we do in the preparatory stages of life as
though itrsquos a phase we grow out of once we reach a certain age Noris it just a pleasant medicine that we need to inject a little more of
into our relationships Listening ought to be at the heart of our
spirituality our relationships our mission as the body of Christ our
relationship to culture and the world We are invited to approach
everything with the goal of listening first We are called to par-
ticipate in the listening life
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ONE
Te Listening Life
YOUR L IST OF L IFE-CHANGING BOOKS probably doesnrsquot include an ety-
mological dictionary Tat takes a peculiar kind of nerdiness that
few want to claim Yet I confess that one of the most significant
lessons I learned was from an etymological dictionary that hefty
resource that breaks down the origins of words Irsquom pretty sure the
unabridged edition I dropped onto a library table splintered the
legs underneath it but soon it began to repair some cracks that
existed in my mind Before I opened it with the help of a burly
librarian I knew that listening has the power to heal divisions It
can bridge the divide between people in conflict transform stale-
mates into learning opportunities and unearth solutions from
seemingly intractable situations But I had no idea that listening canheal the rift between those proverbial enemies hearing and doing
Tose bitter rivals are pitted against each other in a few Scrip-
tures with doing billed as the heavy favorite Paul says itrsquos not those
who hear the law but those who do the law who are righteous
James warns those hearers who deceive themselves into thinking
they donrsquot need to be doers Jesus concludes his Sermon on theMount by comparing people who hear his words but donrsquot act on
them to a house built on sand
Here are clear warnings that hearing by itself cannot be trusted
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and that doing is the badge of the faithful It would seem that
hearing is but a narrow channel pouring into the deep sea of doing Yet the etymological dictionary taught me that the sharp distinction
between hearing and doing is the result of human beings tearing
asunder what belongs together For this is its lesson the words listen
and obey have the same root In Latin the word ldquoobeyrdquo would not
exist without the word ldquolistenrdquo Te word we translate into English
as ldquoobediencerdquo literally means a ldquolistening from belowrdquo Obedience
is a deep listening a listening of the whole person a hearing with
your ears and with your heart and with your arms and legs
Tis etymological thrill ride does not stop with Latin Te deep
connection between listening and obedience also appears in Greek
and Hebrew the primary languages of the Bible Te biblical words
for ldquolistenrdquo or ldquohearrdquo can just as easily be translated and frequently
are as ldquoobeyrdquo or ldquogive heed tordquo Plus the root for the words trans-lated in the Greek New estament as ldquoobeyrdquo and ldquoobediencerdquo ismdash
you guessed itmdashlisten Listening and obedience are inextricably
unabashedly linked so much so that we can say that those who
donrsquot act on what they hear have not actually listened As seminary
professor Howard Hendricks put it ldquoBiblically speaking to hear
and not to do is not to hear at allrdquo1
LISTENING AS OBEDIENCE
Te interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in
our lives all the time Sound has the ability to ldquocommandrdquo us to
summon a response in us forcing us to take notice Unlike visual
stimuli certain sounds have an invasive inescapable quality to them
and we donrsquot have ldquoearlidsrdquo to protect us from them2 Our sense ofhearing is the alarm system of our bodies As neuroscientist Seth
Horowitz writes our brains process threatening sounds in a tenth
of a second ldquoelevating your heart rate hunching your shoulders
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he Listening Life 983089983095
and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going
to pounce and eat yourdquo
3
Our bodies involuntarily respond to orobey particular sounds Someone screams in pain and our bodies
jerk instantly in their direction An ambulance siren behind us has
us moving to the side of the road almost instinctually Te sound
of a jackhammer disrupts our train of thought invading our world
without permission Sound calls us to attention4 When someone
says our name in a loud and crowded room even if they are not
talking to us we turn toward them And then there is music A
song sweeps us up with its melody so that we canrsquot not be moved
by it We all know the power music has to shape our moods and
stir our emotions even causing us to make decisions and take
action Music becomes an imperative that our bodies and emotions
respond to Dance is our obedience to music
In our everyday speech we regularly communicate that listeninginvolves more than the sense of hearing Te complaint I hear most
from parents is that their children donrsquot listen to them My friend
Mark has a spirited two-year-old named Will who as Mark re-
ports ldquois in the phase of asserting his independence from us by
doing the exact opposite of what we say Itrsquos harder to get him to
listen nowrdquo When parents say their children wonrsquot listen to them
they mean they wonrsquot obey them Or who of us hasnrsquot sat in the
driverrsquos seat taken a route different from that recommended by the
person next to us gotten lost and later heard ldquoYou should have
listened to merdquo Meaning ldquoYou should have done what I told you
to dordquo No one said listening was always fun
Psychologist and marriage researcher John Gottman says that
one of the leading gauges for measuring a happy marriage is whether spouses allow themselves to be influenced by the other
person5 Are they changed by their relationship or do they become
more entrenched in their old ways Being influenced by another
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person is a sure indication of true listening because it means that
your choices and actions are following your ears Apparently lis-tening is important in marriage Who knew
New estament scholar Scot McKnight reports that the word
listen appears in the Bible over fifteen hundred times and that the
most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people
donrsquot listen6 Isaiah 983092983096983096 is particularly scathing
You have never heard you have never knownfrom of old your ear has not been opened
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously
and that from birth you were called a rebel
When your ears are closed you do not yield to Godrsquos commands
and you are called a rebel
Listening is never passive a stall or placeholder until doing stepsin and saves the day Biblical listening is a whole-hearted full-
bodied listening that not only vibrates our eardrums but echoes in
our souls and resonates out into our limbs Johnrsquos famous picture
of Jesus as the Word of God means that Jesusrsquo entire incarnated
life not only his parables and sermons is the expression of Godrsquos
mind His life is Godrsquos speech to us We are correspondingly askedto listen with our lives and we are not truly listening unless we are
responding to Jesus with all our heart mind soul and strength Tis
kind of listening is done on the move
HEARING AND LISTENING
Up until now I have been using hearing and listening inter-
changeably and for the sake of ease I will go back and forth be-tween those two words throughout this book Te Bible does not
sharply distinguish between the two though I suspect that when
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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983090983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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Introduction 983089983091
months there is no way you can anticipate future conversations when
you sit gripping the arms of your chair teeth marks on your tonguesummoning all your will power to keep from interrupting someone
saying something you disagree with In those moments the God-
given ratio of two ears to one mouth seems highly unjust But that is
when the work of true listening really begins Itrsquos one thing to listen
at the beginning of our relationships but itrsquos another thing entirely
to continue to practice the discipline of listening before you speak
Te question that drives this book is how would our relation-
ships change and how would we change if we approached every
situation with the intention of listening first What if we ap-
proached our relationship with God as listeners What if we
viewed our relationship with nature as one of listening What if
we approached our relationships using our ears rather than our
mouths What if we sought to listen to our emotions before wepreached to them
Even though listening has been central to my ministries as
pastor chaplain and spiritual director the listening message is one
that I still need Tey say that pastors preach the sermon they most
need to hear and I am writing this book because I need to hear it
myself I need to remind myself that nothing has changed me like
listening It has not simply been the content that I have received
through listeningmdashthe words stories and whispers of othersmdashthat
has changed me it is the very act of listening Tere is something
about settling in and paying attention to someone or Someone
letting them have the floor and steer the conversation where they
want to go that is in itself transformative
Te very first word of the Rule of St Benedict that famous textthat has guided the life of monastic communities since the sixth
century is listen I want for us to put listening back where it be-
longs at the beginning in every aspect of life and faith Listening
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isnrsquot only something we do in the preparatory stages of life as
though itrsquos a phase we grow out of once we reach a certain age Noris it just a pleasant medicine that we need to inject a little more of
into our relationships Listening ought to be at the heart of our
spirituality our relationships our mission as the body of Christ our
relationship to culture and the world We are invited to approach
everything with the goal of listening first We are called to par-
ticipate in the listening life
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ONE
Te Listening Life
YOUR L IST OF L IFE-CHANGING BOOKS probably doesnrsquot include an ety-
mological dictionary Tat takes a peculiar kind of nerdiness that
few want to claim Yet I confess that one of the most significant
lessons I learned was from an etymological dictionary that hefty
resource that breaks down the origins of words Irsquom pretty sure the
unabridged edition I dropped onto a library table splintered the
legs underneath it but soon it began to repair some cracks that
existed in my mind Before I opened it with the help of a burly
librarian I knew that listening has the power to heal divisions It
can bridge the divide between people in conflict transform stale-
mates into learning opportunities and unearth solutions from
seemingly intractable situations But I had no idea that listening canheal the rift between those proverbial enemies hearing and doing
Tose bitter rivals are pitted against each other in a few Scrip-
tures with doing billed as the heavy favorite Paul says itrsquos not those
who hear the law but those who do the law who are righteous
James warns those hearers who deceive themselves into thinking
they donrsquot need to be doers Jesus concludes his Sermon on theMount by comparing people who hear his words but donrsquot act on
them to a house built on sand
Here are clear warnings that hearing by itself cannot be trusted
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and that doing is the badge of the faithful It would seem that
hearing is but a narrow channel pouring into the deep sea of doing Yet the etymological dictionary taught me that the sharp distinction
between hearing and doing is the result of human beings tearing
asunder what belongs together For this is its lesson the words listen
and obey have the same root In Latin the word ldquoobeyrdquo would not
exist without the word ldquolistenrdquo Te word we translate into English
as ldquoobediencerdquo literally means a ldquolistening from belowrdquo Obedience
is a deep listening a listening of the whole person a hearing with
your ears and with your heart and with your arms and legs
Tis etymological thrill ride does not stop with Latin Te deep
connection between listening and obedience also appears in Greek
and Hebrew the primary languages of the Bible Te biblical words
for ldquolistenrdquo or ldquohearrdquo can just as easily be translated and frequently
are as ldquoobeyrdquo or ldquogive heed tordquo Plus the root for the words trans-lated in the Greek New estament as ldquoobeyrdquo and ldquoobediencerdquo ismdash
you guessed itmdashlisten Listening and obedience are inextricably
unabashedly linked so much so that we can say that those who
donrsquot act on what they hear have not actually listened As seminary
professor Howard Hendricks put it ldquoBiblically speaking to hear
and not to do is not to hear at allrdquo1
LISTENING AS OBEDIENCE
Te interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in
our lives all the time Sound has the ability to ldquocommandrdquo us to
summon a response in us forcing us to take notice Unlike visual
stimuli certain sounds have an invasive inescapable quality to them
and we donrsquot have ldquoearlidsrdquo to protect us from them2 Our sense ofhearing is the alarm system of our bodies As neuroscientist Seth
Horowitz writes our brains process threatening sounds in a tenth
of a second ldquoelevating your heart rate hunching your shoulders
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he Listening Life 983089983095
and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going
to pounce and eat yourdquo
3
Our bodies involuntarily respond to orobey particular sounds Someone screams in pain and our bodies
jerk instantly in their direction An ambulance siren behind us has
us moving to the side of the road almost instinctually Te sound
of a jackhammer disrupts our train of thought invading our world
without permission Sound calls us to attention4 When someone
says our name in a loud and crowded room even if they are not
talking to us we turn toward them And then there is music A
song sweeps us up with its melody so that we canrsquot not be moved
by it We all know the power music has to shape our moods and
stir our emotions even causing us to make decisions and take
action Music becomes an imperative that our bodies and emotions
respond to Dance is our obedience to music
In our everyday speech we regularly communicate that listeninginvolves more than the sense of hearing Te complaint I hear most
from parents is that their children donrsquot listen to them My friend
Mark has a spirited two-year-old named Will who as Mark re-
ports ldquois in the phase of asserting his independence from us by
doing the exact opposite of what we say Itrsquos harder to get him to
listen nowrdquo When parents say their children wonrsquot listen to them
they mean they wonrsquot obey them Or who of us hasnrsquot sat in the
driverrsquos seat taken a route different from that recommended by the
person next to us gotten lost and later heard ldquoYou should have
listened to merdquo Meaning ldquoYou should have done what I told you
to dordquo No one said listening was always fun
Psychologist and marriage researcher John Gottman says that
one of the leading gauges for measuring a happy marriage is whether spouses allow themselves to be influenced by the other
person5 Are they changed by their relationship or do they become
more entrenched in their old ways Being influenced by another
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person is a sure indication of true listening because it means that
your choices and actions are following your ears Apparently lis-tening is important in marriage Who knew
New estament scholar Scot McKnight reports that the word
listen appears in the Bible over fifteen hundred times and that the
most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people
donrsquot listen6 Isaiah 983092983096983096 is particularly scathing
You have never heard you have never knownfrom of old your ear has not been opened
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously
and that from birth you were called a rebel
When your ears are closed you do not yield to Godrsquos commands
and you are called a rebel
Listening is never passive a stall or placeholder until doing stepsin and saves the day Biblical listening is a whole-hearted full-
bodied listening that not only vibrates our eardrums but echoes in
our souls and resonates out into our limbs Johnrsquos famous picture
of Jesus as the Word of God means that Jesusrsquo entire incarnated
life not only his parables and sermons is the expression of Godrsquos
mind His life is Godrsquos speech to us We are correspondingly askedto listen with our lives and we are not truly listening unless we are
responding to Jesus with all our heart mind soul and strength Tis
kind of listening is done on the move
HEARING AND LISTENING
Up until now I have been using hearing and listening inter-
changeably and for the sake of ease I will go back and forth be-tween those two words throughout this book Te Bible does not
sharply distinguish between the two though I suspect that when
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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isnrsquot only something we do in the preparatory stages of life as
though itrsquos a phase we grow out of once we reach a certain age Noris it just a pleasant medicine that we need to inject a little more of
into our relationships Listening ought to be at the heart of our
spirituality our relationships our mission as the body of Christ our
relationship to culture and the world We are invited to approach
everything with the goal of listening first We are called to par-
ticipate in the listening life
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ONE
Te Listening Life
YOUR L IST OF L IFE-CHANGING BOOKS probably doesnrsquot include an ety-
mological dictionary Tat takes a peculiar kind of nerdiness that
few want to claim Yet I confess that one of the most significant
lessons I learned was from an etymological dictionary that hefty
resource that breaks down the origins of words Irsquom pretty sure the
unabridged edition I dropped onto a library table splintered the
legs underneath it but soon it began to repair some cracks that
existed in my mind Before I opened it with the help of a burly
librarian I knew that listening has the power to heal divisions It
can bridge the divide between people in conflict transform stale-
mates into learning opportunities and unearth solutions from
seemingly intractable situations But I had no idea that listening canheal the rift between those proverbial enemies hearing and doing
Tose bitter rivals are pitted against each other in a few Scrip-
tures with doing billed as the heavy favorite Paul says itrsquos not those
who hear the law but those who do the law who are righteous
James warns those hearers who deceive themselves into thinking
they donrsquot need to be doers Jesus concludes his Sermon on theMount by comparing people who hear his words but donrsquot act on
them to a house built on sand
Here are clear warnings that hearing by itself cannot be trusted
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and that doing is the badge of the faithful It would seem that
hearing is but a narrow channel pouring into the deep sea of doing Yet the etymological dictionary taught me that the sharp distinction
between hearing and doing is the result of human beings tearing
asunder what belongs together For this is its lesson the words listen
and obey have the same root In Latin the word ldquoobeyrdquo would not
exist without the word ldquolistenrdquo Te word we translate into English
as ldquoobediencerdquo literally means a ldquolistening from belowrdquo Obedience
is a deep listening a listening of the whole person a hearing with
your ears and with your heart and with your arms and legs
Tis etymological thrill ride does not stop with Latin Te deep
connection between listening and obedience also appears in Greek
and Hebrew the primary languages of the Bible Te biblical words
for ldquolistenrdquo or ldquohearrdquo can just as easily be translated and frequently
are as ldquoobeyrdquo or ldquogive heed tordquo Plus the root for the words trans-lated in the Greek New estament as ldquoobeyrdquo and ldquoobediencerdquo ismdash
you guessed itmdashlisten Listening and obedience are inextricably
unabashedly linked so much so that we can say that those who
donrsquot act on what they hear have not actually listened As seminary
professor Howard Hendricks put it ldquoBiblically speaking to hear
and not to do is not to hear at allrdquo1
LISTENING AS OBEDIENCE
Te interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in
our lives all the time Sound has the ability to ldquocommandrdquo us to
summon a response in us forcing us to take notice Unlike visual
stimuli certain sounds have an invasive inescapable quality to them
and we donrsquot have ldquoearlidsrdquo to protect us from them2 Our sense ofhearing is the alarm system of our bodies As neuroscientist Seth
Horowitz writes our brains process threatening sounds in a tenth
of a second ldquoelevating your heart rate hunching your shoulders
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he Listening Life 983089983095
and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going
to pounce and eat yourdquo
3
Our bodies involuntarily respond to orobey particular sounds Someone screams in pain and our bodies
jerk instantly in their direction An ambulance siren behind us has
us moving to the side of the road almost instinctually Te sound
of a jackhammer disrupts our train of thought invading our world
without permission Sound calls us to attention4 When someone
says our name in a loud and crowded room even if they are not
talking to us we turn toward them And then there is music A
song sweeps us up with its melody so that we canrsquot not be moved
by it We all know the power music has to shape our moods and
stir our emotions even causing us to make decisions and take
action Music becomes an imperative that our bodies and emotions
respond to Dance is our obedience to music
In our everyday speech we regularly communicate that listeninginvolves more than the sense of hearing Te complaint I hear most
from parents is that their children donrsquot listen to them My friend
Mark has a spirited two-year-old named Will who as Mark re-
ports ldquois in the phase of asserting his independence from us by
doing the exact opposite of what we say Itrsquos harder to get him to
listen nowrdquo When parents say their children wonrsquot listen to them
they mean they wonrsquot obey them Or who of us hasnrsquot sat in the
driverrsquos seat taken a route different from that recommended by the
person next to us gotten lost and later heard ldquoYou should have
listened to merdquo Meaning ldquoYou should have done what I told you
to dordquo No one said listening was always fun
Psychologist and marriage researcher John Gottman says that
one of the leading gauges for measuring a happy marriage is whether spouses allow themselves to be influenced by the other
person5 Are they changed by their relationship or do they become
more entrenched in their old ways Being influenced by another
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person is a sure indication of true listening because it means that
your choices and actions are following your ears Apparently lis-tening is important in marriage Who knew
New estament scholar Scot McKnight reports that the word
listen appears in the Bible over fifteen hundred times and that the
most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people
donrsquot listen6 Isaiah 983092983096983096 is particularly scathing
You have never heard you have never knownfrom of old your ear has not been opened
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously
and that from birth you were called a rebel
When your ears are closed you do not yield to Godrsquos commands
and you are called a rebel
Listening is never passive a stall or placeholder until doing stepsin and saves the day Biblical listening is a whole-hearted full-
bodied listening that not only vibrates our eardrums but echoes in
our souls and resonates out into our limbs Johnrsquos famous picture
of Jesus as the Word of God means that Jesusrsquo entire incarnated
life not only his parables and sermons is the expression of Godrsquos
mind His life is Godrsquos speech to us We are correspondingly askedto listen with our lives and we are not truly listening unless we are
responding to Jesus with all our heart mind soul and strength Tis
kind of listening is done on the move
HEARING AND LISTENING
Up until now I have been using hearing and listening inter-
changeably and for the sake of ease I will go back and forth be-tween those two words throughout this book Te Bible does not
sharply distinguish between the two though I suspect that when
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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ONE
Te Listening Life
YOUR L IST OF L IFE-CHANGING BOOKS probably doesnrsquot include an ety-
mological dictionary Tat takes a peculiar kind of nerdiness that
few want to claim Yet I confess that one of the most significant
lessons I learned was from an etymological dictionary that hefty
resource that breaks down the origins of words Irsquom pretty sure the
unabridged edition I dropped onto a library table splintered the
legs underneath it but soon it began to repair some cracks that
existed in my mind Before I opened it with the help of a burly
librarian I knew that listening has the power to heal divisions It
can bridge the divide between people in conflict transform stale-
mates into learning opportunities and unearth solutions from
seemingly intractable situations But I had no idea that listening canheal the rift between those proverbial enemies hearing and doing
Tose bitter rivals are pitted against each other in a few Scrip-
tures with doing billed as the heavy favorite Paul says itrsquos not those
who hear the law but those who do the law who are righteous
James warns those hearers who deceive themselves into thinking
they donrsquot need to be doers Jesus concludes his Sermon on theMount by comparing people who hear his words but donrsquot act on
them to a house built on sand
Here are clear warnings that hearing by itself cannot be trusted
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and that doing is the badge of the faithful It would seem that
hearing is but a narrow channel pouring into the deep sea of doing Yet the etymological dictionary taught me that the sharp distinction
between hearing and doing is the result of human beings tearing
asunder what belongs together For this is its lesson the words listen
and obey have the same root In Latin the word ldquoobeyrdquo would not
exist without the word ldquolistenrdquo Te word we translate into English
as ldquoobediencerdquo literally means a ldquolistening from belowrdquo Obedience
is a deep listening a listening of the whole person a hearing with
your ears and with your heart and with your arms and legs
Tis etymological thrill ride does not stop with Latin Te deep
connection between listening and obedience also appears in Greek
and Hebrew the primary languages of the Bible Te biblical words
for ldquolistenrdquo or ldquohearrdquo can just as easily be translated and frequently
are as ldquoobeyrdquo or ldquogive heed tordquo Plus the root for the words trans-lated in the Greek New estament as ldquoobeyrdquo and ldquoobediencerdquo ismdash
you guessed itmdashlisten Listening and obedience are inextricably
unabashedly linked so much so that we can say that those who
donrsquot act on what they hear have not actually listened As seminary
professor Howard Hendricks put it ldquoBiblically speaking to hear
and not to do is not to hear at allrdquo1
LISTENING AS OBEDIENCE
Te interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in
our lives all the time Sound has the ability to ldquocommandrdquo us to
summon a response in us forcing us to take notice Unlike visual
stimuli certain sounds have an invasive inescapable quality to them
and we donrsquot have ldquoearlidsrdquo to protect us from them2 Our sense ofhearing is the alarm system of our bodies As neuroscientist Seth
Horowitz writes our brains process threatening sounds in a tenth
of a second ldquoelevating your heart rate hunching your shoulders
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he Listening Life 983089983095
and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going
to pounce and eat yourdquo
3
Our bodies involuntarily respond to orobey particular sounds Someone screams in pain and our bodies
jerk instantly in their direction An ambulance siren behind us has
us moving to the side of the road almost instinctually Te sound
of a jackhammer disrupts our train of thought invading our world
without permission Sound calls us to attention4 When someone
says our name in a loud and crowded room even if they are not
talking to us we turn toward them And then there is music A
song sweeps us up with its melody so that we canrsquot not be moved
by it We all know the power music has to shape our moods and
stir our emotions even causing us to make decisions and take
action Music becomes an imperative that our bodies and emotions
respond to Dance is our obedience to music
In our everyday speech we regularly communicate that listeninginvolves more than the sense of hearing Te complaint I hear most
from parents is that their children donrsquot listen to them My friend
Mark has a spirited two-year-old named Will who as Mark re-
ports ldquois in the phase of asserting his independence from us by
doing the exact opposite of what we say Itrsquos harder to get him to
listen nowrdquo When parents say their children wonrsquot listen to them
they mean they wonrsquot obey them Or who of us hasnrsquot sat in the
driverrsquos seat taken a route different from that recommended by the
person next to us gotten lost and later heard ldquoYou should have
listened to merdquo Meaning ldquoYou should have done what I told you
to dordquo No one said listening was always fun
Psychologist and marriage researcher John Gottman says that
one of the leading gauges for measuring a happy marriage is whether spouses allow themselves to be influenced by the other
person5 Are they changed by their relationship or do they become
more entrenched in their old ways Being influenced by another
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person is a sure indication of true listening because it means that
your choices and actions are following your ears Apparently lis-tening is important in marriage Who knew
New estament scholar Scot McKnight reports that the word
listen appears in the Bible over fifteen hundred times and that the
most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people
donrsquot listen6 Isaiah 983092983096983096 is particularly scathing
You have never heard you have never knownfrom of old your ear has not been opened
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously
and that from birth you were called a rebel
When your ears are closed you do not yield to Godrsquos commands
and you are called a rebel
Listening is never passive a stall or placeholder until doing stepsin and saves the day Biblical listening is a whole-hearted full-
bodied listening that not only vibrates our eardrums but echoes in
our souls and resonates out into our limbs Johnrsquos famous picture
of Jesus as the Word of God means that Jesusrsquo entire incarnated
life not only his parables and sermons is the expression of Godrsquos
mind His life is Godrsquos speech to us We are correspondingly askedto listen with our lives and we are not truly listening unless we are
responding to Jesus with all our heart mind soul and strength Tis
kind of listening is done on the move
HEARING AND LISTENING
Up until now I have been using hearing and listening inter-
changeably and for the sake of ease I will go back and forth be-tween those two words throughout this book Te Bible does not
sharply distinguish between the two though I suspect that when
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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and that doing is the badge of the faithful It would seem that
hearing is but a narrow channel pouring into the deep sea of doing Yet the etymological dictionary taught me that the sharp distinction
between hearing and doing is the result of human beings tearing
asunder what belongs together For this is its lesson the words listen
and obey have the same root In Latin the word ldquoobeyrdquo would not
exist without the word ldquolistenrdquo Te word we translate into English
as ldquoobediencerdquo literally means a ldquolistening from belowrdquo Obedience
is a deep listening a listening of the whole person a hearing with
your ears and with your heart and with your arms and legs
Tis etymological thrill ride does not stop with Latin Te deep
connection between listening and obedience also appears in Greek
and Hebrew the primary languages of the Bible Te biblical words
for ldquolistenrdquo or ldquohearrdquo can just as easily be translated and frequently
are as ldquoobeyrdquo or ldquogive heed tordquo Plus the root for the words trans-lated in the Greek New estament as ldquoobeyrdquo and ldquoobediencerdquo ismdash
you guessed itmdashlisten Listening and obedience are inextricably
unabashedly linked so much so that we can say that those who
donrsquot act on what they hear have not actually listened As seminary
professor Howard Hendricks put it ldquoBiblically speaking to hear
and not to do is not to hear at allrdquo1
LISTENING AS OBEDIENCE
Te interplay between listening and obedience expresses itself in
our lives all the time Sound has the ability to ldquocommandrdquo us to
summon a response in us forcing us to take notice Unlike visual
stimuli certain sounds have an invasive inescapable quality to them
and we donrsquot have ldquoearlidsrdquo to protect us from them2 Our sense ofhearing is the alarm system of our bodies As neuroscientist Seth
Horowitz writes our brains process threatening sounds in a tenth
of a second ldquoelevating your heart rate hunching your shoulders
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he Listening Life 983089983095
and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going
to pounce and eat yourdquo
3
Our bodies involuntarily respond to orobey particular sounds Someone screams in pain and our bodies
jerk instantly in their direction An ambulance siren behind us has
us moving to the side of the road almost instinctually Te sound
of a jackhammer disrupts our train of thought invading our world
without permission Sound calls us to attention4 When someone
says our name in a loud and crowded room even if they are not
talking to us we turn toward them And then there is music A
song sweeps us up with its melody so that we canrsquot not be moved
by it We all know the power music has to shape our moods and
stir our emotions even causing us to make decisions and take
action Music becomes an imperative that our bodies and emotions
respond to Dance is our obedience to music
In our everyday speech we regularly communicate that listeninginvolves more than the sense of hearing Te complaint I hear most
from parents is that their children donrsquot listen to them My friend
Mark has a spirited two-year-old named Will who as Mark re-
ports ldquois in the phase of asserting his independence from us by
doing the exact opposite of what we say Itrsquos harder to get him to
listen nowrdquo When parents say their children wonrsquot listen to them
they mean they wonrsquot obey them Or who of us hasnrsquot sat in the
driverrsquos seat taken a route different from that recommended by the
person next to us gotten lost and later heard ldquoYou should have
listened to merdquo Meaning ldquoYou should have done what I told you
to dordquo No one said listening was always fun
Psychologist and marriage researcher John Gottman says that
one of the leading gauges for measuring a happy marriage is whether spouses allow themselves to be influenced by the other
person5 Are they changed by their relationship or do they become
more entrenched in their old ways Being influenced by another
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person is a sure indication of true listening because it means that
your choices and actions are following your ears Apparently lis-tening is important in marriage Who knew
New estament scholar Scot McKnight reports that the word
listen appears in the Bible over fifteen hundred times and that the
most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people
donrsquot listen6 Isaiah 983092983096983096 is particularly scathing
You have never heard you have never knownfrom of old your ear has not been opened
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously
and that from birth you were called a rebel
When your ears are closed you do not yield to Godrsquos commands
and you are called a rebel
Listening is never passive a stall or placeholder until doing stepsin and saves the day Biblical listening is a whole-hearted full-
bodied listening that not only vibrates our eardrums but echoes in
our souls and resonates out into our limbs Johnrsquos famous picture
of Jesus as the Word of God means that Jesusrsquo entire incarnated
life not only his parables and sermons is the expression of Godrsquos
mind His life is Godrsquos speech to us We are correspondingly askedto listen with our lives and we are not truly listening unless we are
responding to Jesus with all our heart mind soul and strength Tis
kind of listening is done on the move
HEARING AND LISTENING
Up until now I have been using hearing and listening inter-
changeably and for the sake of ease I will go back and forth be-tween those two words throughout this book Te Bible does not
sharply distinguish between the two though I suspect that when
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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983090983094 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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he Listening Life 983089983095
and making you cast around to see if whatever you heard is going
to pounce and eat yourdquo
3
Our bodies involuntarily respond to orobey particular sounds Someone screams in pain and our bodies
jerk instantly in their direction An ambulance siren behind us has
us moving to the side of the road almost instinctually Te sound
of a jackhammer disrupts our train of thought invading our world
without permission Sound calls us to attention4 When someone
says our name in a loud and crowded room even if they are not
talking to us we turn toward them And then there is music A
song sweeps us up with its melody so that we canrsquot not be moved
by it We all know the power music has to shape our moods and
stir our emotions even causing us to make decisions and take
action Music becomes an imperative that our bodies and emotions
respond to Dance is our obedience to music
In our everyday speech we regularly communicate that listeninginvolves more than the sense of hearing Te complaint I hear most
from parents is that their children donrsquot listen to them My friend
Mark has a spirited two-year-old named Will who as Mark re-
ports ldquois in the phase of asserting his independence from us by
doing the exact opposite of what we say Itrsquos harder to get him to
listen nowrdquo When parents say their children wonrsquot listen to them
they mean they wonrsquot obey them Or who of us hasnrsquot sat in the
driverrsquos seat taken a route different from that recommended by the
person next to us gotten lost and later heard ldquoYou should have
listened to merdquo Meaning ldquoYou should have done what I told you
to dordquo No one said listening was always fun
Psychologist and marriage researcher John Gottman says that
one of the leading gauges for measuring a happy marriage is whether spouses allow themselves to be influenced by the other
person5 Are they changed by their relationship or do they become
more entrenched in their old ways Being influenced by another
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person is a sure indication of true listening because it means that
your choices and actions are following your ears Apparently lis-tening is important in marriage Who knew
New estament scholar Scot McKnight reports that the word
listen appears in the Bible over fifteen hundred times and that the
most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people
donrsquot listen6 Isaiah 983092983096983096 is particularly scathing
You have never heard you have never knownfrom of old your ear has not been opened
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously
and that from birth you were called a rebel
When your ears are closed you do not yield to Godrsquos commands
and you are called a rebel
Listening is never passive a stall or placeholder until doing stepsin and saves the day Biblical listening is a whole-hearted full-
bodied listening that not only vibrates our eardrums but echoes in
our souls and resonates out into our limbs Johnrsquos famous picture
of Jesus as the Word of God means that Jesusrsquo entire incarnated
life not only his parables and sermons is the expression of Godrsquos
mind His life is Godrsquos speech to us We are correspondingly askedto listen with our lives and we are not truly listening unless we are
responding to Jesus with all our heart mind soul and strength Tis
kind of listening is done on the move
HEARING AND LISTENING
Up until now I have been using hearing and listening inter-
changeably and for the sake of ease I will go back and forth be-tween those two words throughout this book Te Bible does not
sharply distinguish between the two though I suspect that when
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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person is a sure indication of true listening because it means that
your choices and actions are following your ears Apparently lis-tening is important in marriage Who knew
New estament scholar Scot McKnight reports that the word
listen appears in the Bible over fifteen hundred times and that the
most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people
donrsquot listen6 Isaiah 983092983096983096 is particularly scathing
You have never heard you have never knownfrom of old your ear has not been opened
For I knew that you would deal very treacherously
and that from birth you were called a rebel
When your ears are closed you do not yield to Godrsquos commands
and you are called a rebel
Listening is never passive a stall or placeholder until doing stepsin and saves the day Biblical listening is a whole-hearted full-
bodied listening that not only vibrates our eardrums but echoes in
our souls and resonates out into our limbs Johnrsquos famous picture
of Jesus as the Word of God means that Jesusrsquo entire incarnated
life not only his parables and sermons is the expression of Godrsquos
mind His life is Godrsquos speech to us We are correspondingly askedto listen with our lives and we are not truly listening unless we are
responding to Jesus with all our heart mind soul and strength Tis
kind of listening is done on the move
HEARING AND LISTENING
Up until now I have been using hearing and listening inter-
changeably and for the sake of ease I will go back and forth be-tween those two words throughout this book Te Bible does not
sharply distinguish between the two though I suspect that when
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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he Listening Life 983089983097
the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah ldquokeep on hearing but do
not understandrdquo (Isaiah 983094983097 983141983155983158) he is making a distinctionHearing generally speaking is one of the five senses the one that
centers on our ears and our brainrsquos processing of the sounds it re-
ceives It is involuntary and momentary Hearing is something that
happens to us Sounds force our attention and we ldquoobeyrdquo them
instinctually through our bodyrsquos responses
Listening on the other hand is something that we choose Lis-
tening is a practice of focused attention Hearing is an act of the
senses but listening is an act of the will In listening you center not
only your ears but also your mind heart and posture on someone
or something other than yourself It is a chosen obedience like
soldiers falling into line the moment their commanding officer
calls them to attention
THE URGENCY OF LISTENING
Listening is often presented as a balm for making our relationships
go more smoothly and peacefully for making us more aware of the
needs of people around us Te interpersonal reasons are valuable
and essential but I think there are also deep intrapersonal reasons
for learning how to listen When listening has been hard these
personal motivations are what have kept me going I have devoted
and redevoted myself to listening because it is making me into the
kind of person I wish to be
Te beginning of discipleship is listening At the sound of Jesusrsquo
voice his first followers dropped their nets and followed him Of
course discipleship must involve more than one episode of lis-
tening it is an ongoing journey of listening Disciples are walkinglisteners If we think that discipleship is lacking in todayrsquos church
then perhaps we should place an emphasis on people learning how
to listen
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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Listening is important enough to Jesus that he devotes his first
parable to it (Mark 983092983089-983090983088) In Markrsquos Gospel Jesus frames theparable of the sower with the opening word ldquoListenrdquo and the
closing exclamation ldquoLet anyone with ears to hear listenrdquo Overtly
about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seed on different types
of soil the story is actually about different types of hearers Tere
are the path hearersmdashthose who donrsquot really hear at all deflecting
and dismissing Jesusrsquo words Tere are the rocky listeners who let
the word penetrate a little but then reject it because of adverse
voices of struggle and persecution Tird are the thorny listeners
who listen a while longer but slowly allow the subtle power of se-
ductive voicesmdashthe accumulation of wealth and the sparkle of ma-
terial thingsmdashto suffocate the word Finally are the true and
fruitful listeners those who receive the word deep into themselves
where it does its proper work of flowering and bearing fruit Tis last group would seem to be the ones who in Jesusrsquo words
have ldquoears to hearrdquo by which he seems to link listening and com-
prehension treating ears as organs of understanding Tose with
hearing ears have a level of attunement to the deeper meanings
embedded in Jesusrsquo teaching Later in Markrsquos Gospel Jesus cautions
his followers to be careful about how they listen because how they
listen will determine how much they understand
What seems to separate the different types of listeners is the
amount of effort that they put into listening What we lack in under-
standing we can make up for in asking questions Te true listeners
are those who stay who crowd around Jesus and ask him the inter-
pretation of the parable Tis is the kind of listener God desires those
who pursue and seek and relentlessly question Tey sit with Jesusrsquo words like an old friend that you know yet really donrsquot know chewing
and digesting continuing to seek greater clarity and depth of under-
standing Tey donrsquot just ask the first question they also ask the
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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983090983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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983090983092 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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983090983094 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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983090983096 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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983091983088 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
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983091983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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he Listening Life 983090983089
second and third questions Tey exhaust others with their questions
As has been noted by many biblical scholars the parable of thesower not only describes different types of hearers but it leads to
the very divisions it describes Jesusrsquo parables sift out those who are
hard of hearing who merely want to be entertained and see the
new rabbinic celebrity Tose hearers scatter after Jesus finishes
teaching while the true listeners stay
I taught this parable to college students for years and I marveled
at how our classroom setting would inevitably mirror the original
setting of the parable After the class was over most students would
head back to the dorms but there would be one or two students
who stayed and asked question after question or wrote on their
manuscripts laboring to understand what Jesus was saying and the
implications it had for their lives I always wondered whether these
were the students with ears to hearListening makes us into disciplesmdashthose who learn who follow
and who submit to the Lord And listening also makes us into
servants What is a servant if not an obedient listener We could
rephrase Jesusrsquo famous words about servanthood like this and keep
his same meaning ldquoYou know that the Gentile rulers tell people
what to do and their great ones expect to be heard It is not so
among you whoever wishes to be great must listen and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be listener to allrdquo (see Mark
983089983088983092983090-983092983091) In Jesusrsquo upside-down kingdom the tables are turned
Tose in the position to tell people what to do must become lis-
teners In the Gentile world listening flows from the bottom up
but in Jesusrsquo kingdom listening is top-down
oo often we try to gain control with our words Listening done well gives power away A commitment to listening is one of the
best antidotes for power and privilege A servant listener does not
dominate the conversation Servants take the attention off them-
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8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
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983090983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
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8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
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983090983092 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
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983090983094 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
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983090983096 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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983091983088 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2930
983091983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 3030
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 1930
983090983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
selves and focus their attention on the needs and interests of others
Te call to servanthood is at the heart of the gospel it is the call tohumble ourselves to empty ourselves of our own agendas and egos
and submit ourselves to the Lord and to others Servant listening
is a practice of presence in which we set aside what might distract
us and what we think should happen in a moment or conversation
It is an act of humility in which we acknowledge that no matter
who we are listening to we come to learn Servant listening is an
act of surrender in which we lay down our verbal weapons our
preconceived notions our quick advice and our desire to steer the
conversation toward ourselves We release our grasp on the terms
and direction of the conversation
We love to talk about listening Itrsquos easier than actually listening
Tere is much lip service paid to listening but listening is a service
of the ear the mind and the heart Listening is an act of servant hoodand serving is hard Tere are no accolades in serving When a
servant is doing his job no one notices If we wish to imitate Jesus
and become servants we must learn how to listen
TOO MANY VOICES
Tings were getting weird Jesus had dragged a few of his disciples
up the hill and though he climbed the mountain with his normal
face Jesus now wore his mountain face bleach-white sparkling
like a diamond in the sun Ten some uninvited strangely familiar
guests had crashed the party men that seemed a little too com-
fortable on mountaintops with glowing faces But Peter unfazed
as always in the face of drama hatched a plan ldquoLordrdquo he said ldquothis
is the most epic reunion in historymdashyou and Moses and Elijahhaving drinks and talking about old times So what if James and
John and I build you some tents to keep this party goingrdquo Ten
followed an awkward silence of biblical proportions
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2030
he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2130
983090983092 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2230
he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2330
983090983094 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
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he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2530
983090983096 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
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983091983088 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
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he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
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983091983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
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he Listening Life 983090983091
Fortunately a talking cloud made the situation less weird It
swept over them and from within a voice thundered ldquoTis is mySon the one that I love and you must listen to himrdquo And Moses
and Elijah called it an early night (see Mark 983097983089-983096)
Even with all the visual theatrics and prophetic cameos in the
transfiguration the story is ultimately about listening Specifically
it is about who we should be listening to Te first voice we must
listen to belongs to Jesus because his voice has divine credentials
We must be careful about how we listen because life in this world
is wildly polyphonic filled with countless voices that beckon us to
do their bidding
I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike
and Claudia who had recently returned from Malawi a small
country in southeastern Africa We were sitting in a booth at one
of those chain restaurants that has a twenty-seven-page menu Tat booth was my front-row seat to culture shock Mike and
Claudia picked up the menu and quickly developed the pro-
verbial African-wildebeest-in-headlights glaze Te server came
and went several times trying to take our orders but Mike and
Claudia could not make a decision paralyzed by the sheer variety
of options Claudia explained ldquoIn Malawi you have your choice
of chicken or chicken Tere are just so many choices here Every-
thing sounds so goodrdquo
We have an infinite buffet of options and everything sounds so
good Whether we realize it or not we are persistently serenaded
by a cacophony of voices that battle for our souls each seducing us
with promises of fullness Marketing experts say that Americans
living in large cities are exposed to as many as five thousand adver-tisements per day7 In such a world we have the freedom to be the
ultimate selective listeners If one voice doesnrsquot deliver what it
promised we can always listen to another voice that offers us more
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8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2130
983090983092 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2230
he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2330
983090983094 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2430
he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2530
983090983096 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2630
he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2730
983091983088 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2830
he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2930
983091983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 3030
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2130
983090983092 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
satisfaction As a result our attention spans become shorter and
our tastes become more fastidious and demanding We can becomeconsumers who are impossible to please because we think that
there is always a more appealing voice speaking somewhere else
promising us more happiness
Te sort of people that we become is in large part determined
by the voices that we choose to listen to ruly we do not have a
choice of listening versus not listening We all obey certain voices
and thus the question is not ldquoWill I listenrdquo but ldquoWhich voices will
I listen tordquo But it is not only a matter of choosing to listen to good
voices over bad ones If only it were as simple as the proverbial
whispering angel and devil on our shoulders It is also a matter of
whether we will choose to listen to different voices voices that donrsquot
sound the same as our own Will we listen to the voices of different
cultures ethnicities backgrounds and beliefs Will we listen to the voices that unsettle us and might make us feel anxious or guilty If
we choose to listen only to voices that echo our own we will be
limited in our growth and stunted in our spirituality Choosing to
tune in to only one or two stations may be comfortable but it is
not transformative Te voices we want to hear are not always the
same as the voices we need to hear
OPEN AND CLOSED DOORS
Te book of Revelation picks up the language of the sower parable
repeating Jesusrsquo refrain ldquoLet those with ears to hear listenrdquo In a
message to the church of Laodicea Jesus declares ldquoListen I am
standing at the door knocking if you hear my voice and open the
door I will come in to you and eat with yourdquo (Revelation 983091983090983088) Tetrue listeners hear his voice and invite him in
Tis text gives us another image to work with listening as hos-
pitality In listening we open the door and receive a guest When
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
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he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2330
983090983094 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2430
he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2530
983090983096 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
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8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
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he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2730
983091983088 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2830
he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2930
983091983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 3030
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2230
he Listening Life 983090983093
we listen we welcome others into our space We open ourselves
When we listen we invite others into places of vulnerability andpotential intimacy If we do it right we wonrsquot fully know what we
are getting ourselves into we donrsquot know who will come in and
what they will bring with them We are opening ourselves to sur-
prise to receiving strangers to hearing the unexpected We are
opening ourselves to being changed Jesus said he would come in
and eat with those who hear his voice and in his culture eating was
an intimate act something shared with people on your same social
plane Eating and listening level the playing field
Revelation provides us a picture of listening that involves
opening the door and letting another in But if wersquore honest with
ourselves many times we keep the doors closed Here are a few
reasons why
Wersquore filled with noise Life in this world sometimes has the feelof an emergency response scene a cacophony of blaring sirens
screams barking dogs and crisscrossed messages It seems like
there is no escape from noise A writer for Te New Atlantis called
the relentless stimulation we encounter through our personal tech-
nologymdashemails texts videos podcastsmdashldquothe great electronic
dinrdquo8 Itrsquos like eating every meal in a loud packed restaurant We
are tempted to close our ears just to protect ourselves Yet the noise
creeps in making it exceptionally difficult to create the internal
quiet necessary for true listening
Many of us lament how difficult it is to find stillness and to carve
out calm amid the chaos But the absence of quiet may actually reveal
a resistance to quiet Are we afraid of the voices in our heads that
might start speaking if we took the time to be silent Would we beturning up the volume on our fears regrets and insecurities We may
subconsciously choose to be immersed in outer noise because it is
more comfortable than facing the internal chatter
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2330
983090983094 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2430
he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2530
983090983096 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2630
he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2730
983091983088 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2830
he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2930
983091983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 3030
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2330
983090983094 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
Wersquore lonely Mother eresa called loneliness the leprosy of the
Western world maybe even more devastating than Calcuttapoverty9 Loneliness drives us to talk about ourselves to excess and
to turn conversations toward ourselves It makes us grasp on to
others thinking their role is to meet our needs and it shrinks the
space we have in our souls for welcoming others in Tat loneliness
would keep us from listening and others from listening to us is a
tragedy because being listened to is one of the great assurances in
this universe that we are not alone
Wersquore afraid to change o listen is to be to open change If you
enter a conversation without any possibility of having your mind
changed then you wonrsquot truly listen Another way of putting this
is that fear keeps us from listening I know my own tendency to
cling to beliefs and coping mechanisms because I fear the insta-
bility and uncertainty that will result if I release my grasp But if we are truly prepared to listen we have to be open to the possibility
that some of our choices and beliefs limit us We have to be open
to admitting that we are wrong
Wersquore fragmented rue listening requires attention an offering
of ourselves for a period of time We can be physically present with
another person while our minds and hearts are far away We may
have internalized the cultural lie that our value is wrapped up in
how busy we are Te more we do the more we are in motion the
more significant we are Further our inner worlds so easily echo
the pace and frenzy of our outer worlds and we are busy and scat-
tered constantly multitasking but doing nothing particularly well
including listening
TECHNOLOGY AND THE EROSION OF LISTENING
It seems that if you want to be a spiritual writer these days you have
to include at least a small rant about the way technology is ruining
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2430
he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2530
983090983096 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2630
he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2730
983091983088 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2830
he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2930
983091983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 3030
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2430
he Listening Life 983090983095
everything we hold dear Te Roman Empire fell when the Vis-
igoths invaded from the north and our modern Western civili-zation began to fall when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone But I
donrsquot believe that in order to be spiritually mature we have to
eschew technology write letters by hand and take long daily walks
into the woods After all I recently did a Skype chat with some
family members where I held my cat up to the screen so they could
say hi to her I never want to again live in a world where that isnrsquot
a thing
I do believe that genuine if incomplete connection is possible
through mediating technology and many people who I originally
met online have now become good friends Further there are phe-
nomenal online tools for deepening your spirituality and con-
necting to ancient church traditions
Tat being said Irsquom convinced that life in our wired society iscontributing to the erosion of our capacity for listening For all the
doors that our personal technology opens for us it is closing other
doors one of which is our ability to listen Some of this is obvious
Te best kind of listening involves not only our sense of hearing
but all our senses and if our eyes are focused on a screen and our
fingers are sending texts then wersquore not able to fully listen to the
person right next to us
What is less obvious is how the Internet smartphones and social
media are changing the physical characteristics of our brains by
rerouting our neural pathways We like to think that we are the
ones acting on our devices but the truth is that our devices also act
on us Many neurological studies demonstrate that our technology
is reshaping our brains so that it not only seems more difficult toconcentrate on one thing it is harder to concentrate on one thing
If wersquore immersed in technology day after day our brains are auto-
matically branching out to do several tasks at once making it dif-
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2530
983090983096 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2630
he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2730
983091983088 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2830
he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2930
983091983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 3030
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2530
983090983096 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
ficult to focus our attention on any one thing echnology writer
Linda Stone says that our brains seem stuck in ldquocontinuous partialattentionrdquo10 In other words we are actually taking on the charac-
teristics of our technology our brains echoing the patterns of
social media Our brains buzz with tweets and sound bites and
rapid-fire video popping with short bursts of disparate infor-
mation leaving us at times close to circuit overload Our tech-
nology is producing a splintering effect in us and stripping us of
the ability to be fully present
Irsquove heard people say that as our access to information expands
we are becoming exponentially more knowledgeable as a society
but no wiser Te seemingly infinite sources of information and
the content they spit at us have us sampling everything but di-
gesting little We also have the ability to create playlists of voices
that only say what we want to hear and filter out voices that chal-lenge us to think differently If we donrsquot like what our pastor
preaches in church we can find a podcast that will preach the
sermon we want to hear Wisdom on the other hand is a deep
relational knowledge that comes through slow listening allowing
what we hear to steep and simmer in us And it requires us to listen
to voices that challenge us and present us with the unexpected
forcing us to weigh what we hear against what we believe
One last concern I have about our personal technology is what
it is teaching us about listening itself A former college ministry
colleague once reported this scene to me as he walked through
campus he passed hundreds of students some walking in groups
others walking alone and he estimated that 983094983088 percent of them
including those walking in groups were wearing earbuds I fearthat our technology too often communicates that listening is an
action that closes us Tey may help us attune to our inner worlds
at times but headphones have become a symbol for expressing just
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2630
he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2730
983091983088 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2830
he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2930
983091983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 3030
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2630
he Listening Life 983090983097
how selective and individualistic our listening can be We are on
the wrong track if the way we listen encases and shelters us Myhope is that we will treat listening as an act of hospitality one that
opens us to the world to the people in front of us and to the Lord
who knocks at the door
DIGITAL VERSUS ANALOG LIS TENING
Last year I joined the growing ranks of people who have made
the return to music on vinyl Tere is much debate in my familyas to whether Irsquom a hipster or will soon be eating dinner at 983092 pm
and wearing chest-high pants I have been persuaded that the
analog sound imprinted on records makes a ldquowarmerrdquo sound
which may be the result of a bass sound that is less accurate than
what is recorded on digital music files Vinyl simply sounds more
real more alive more human to me than some flat very precisedigital recordings
What took some adjustment was how often you have to flip a
record to the other side Te technical name for a record is LP
which stands for ldquolong playrdquo and I can only think of someone
saying that sarcastically because each side is about twenty minutes
long I was accustomed to a nonstop music stream of looping play-
lists and Internet radio At first I found the brevity of a record
annoying but then I realized I needed to change the way I listen
to music Now after I get home from work I put on a record put
my feet up close my eyes and listen to one side of an album from
beginning to end
Te nature of the older technology requires me to make listening
the center of my attention for extended periods of time Itrsquos toodistracting to listen to vinyl while Irsquom doing other things because
of how often I have to flip the record When I listen to a record it
gets my focus
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2730
983091983088 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2830
he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2930
983091983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 3030
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2730
983091983088 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
How we listen to music in our digital age often reflects the way
we listen in general Music plays on a loop in the background asa companion to whatever else we are doing It is a soundtrack that
goes with us maybe augmenting our lives but not usually the
centerpiece of our attention sometimes it is simply white noise
Similarly listening for us is an accompaniment to whatever else
has our focus at the time Other people often get our partial at-
tention and we listen to them from the side of our lives
Listening to music on vinyl has taught me to put listening in
all spheres of life at the center of my attention It doesnrsquot mean that
Irsquom always listening rather it means that when I do listen I give it
my focus I stop whatever else I am doing sit down and set my
energy toward whoever is speaking for a period of time Tat de-
voted time of listening is more valuable than hours of partial lis-
tening It is the difference between hearing music on an elevator while you ride to your floor and sitting in a concert hall and lis-
tening to a world-class symphony
I SEE YOU
Even with the ubiquity of music we live in a culture where the
visual is king Pixels are our currency and video icons and images
are our shared language Nike and Apple no longer need words to
explain themselves the swoosh and the partially eaten apple are
more than sufficient11 Even in our spoken language we employ a
surprising number of words that derive from the sense of sight If
you spend much time in boardrooms church-planting meetings or
leadership circles you will hear words like vision focus big picture
big idea clarity and insight which all contain the sense or act ofseeing Seeing is all the buzz
We associate the eyes with identity they are the windows of the
soul And we associate them with intimacy eye contact is one of
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2830
he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2930
983091983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 3030
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2830
he Listening Life 983091983089
the most powerful displays of intimacy When we are feeling vul-
nerable before another person we say they are peering directly intous or burning holes into us with their eyes No one writes love
songs about getting lost in your ears
Te relationship between sight and personal knowledge is an
ancient equation In classical Greek the word for ldquoto seerdquo literally
means ldquoto knowrdquo Te philosopher Heraclitus claimed that ldquoeyes
are more accurate witnesses than earsrdquo and Aristotle declared
ldquoAbove all we value sight because sight is the principle source of
knowledgerdquo12 Philosophy professor Don Ihde observes that there
is a high degree of ldquointimacy between vision and the ultimately real
for Greek thoughtrdquo13
I find this connection between vision knowledge and the nature
of reality a little surprising because what is seenmdashthe world outside
of usmdashcan by itself tell us very little about how to interpret it Webegin to make sense of things and probe deeper into them through
hearing language and conversation and instruction
Metaphors for sight alone are insufficient to represent personal
identity and knowledge Walter Ong points out that the sense of
sight in contrast to hearing takes things apart ldquoVision comes to
a human being one direction at a time to look at a room or land-
scape I must move my eyes around from one part to anotherrdquo14
My power to look at one thing rather than another makes sight
highly controllable and it emphasizes the distance between me
and the object I am looking at In contrast sound incorporates and
unifies Acoustic space is less controllable than visual space Sound
surrounds us immersing us in it and even pours into us15 Te
physiology of the ear dictates that sound must penetrate enteringinto the recesses of our skull Sound breaks down the hard dis-
tinction between subject and object and through listening we par-
ticipate in the minds and lives of others
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2930
983091983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 3030
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 2930
983091983090 983144983141 L983145983155983156983141983150983145983150983143 L983145983142983141
THE PRIORITY OF LISTENING
We may say that ldquoseeing is believingrdquo but in the Bible for the mostpart hearing is believing Te spectacle of the burning bush may
have drawn Moses to the spot but he didnrsquot know he was on sacred
ground until the voice commanded him to take off his shoes
Seeing God in fact can be quite hazardous to your health Te
sense of sight is even linked in some cases with idolatry When
Moses retells the exodus story for a new generation he repeatedly
warns them about creating forms to represent God He reminds
them that ldquothe L983151983154983140 spoke to you out of the fire You heard the
sound of words but saw no form there was only a voicerdquo (Deuter-
onomy 983092983089983090) God is invisible and though God sometimes displays
himself in the visual his persistent means of communication with
his people throughout history is speech in one form or another
We receive his revelations to us through obedient listening Te priority of listening in the Scriptures is well established But
what is unexpected is that the God who spoke the world and the
Bible into existence is also a listener
Copyrighted Material wwwivpresscompermissions
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 3030
8202019 The Listening Life By Adam McHugh - EXCERPT
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullthe-listening-life-by-adam-mchugh-excerpt 3030